


Kingdom Come

by feministkrystal (glitterishy)



Category: NCT (Band), Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - The Raven Cycle Fusion, Coming of Age, Friendship, M/M, Previous Knowledge of the Raven Cycle is Not Necessary, Psychic Abilities, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2020-06-02 23:30:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19451722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitterishy/pseuds/feministkrystal
Summary: Being the only non-psychic in a family of psychics isn't the worst thing in the world to Donghyuck, but it might as well be. Having an obnoxious, entitled soulmate obsessed with discovering the tomb of an ancient mythical king doesn't even factor into the equation, truly. Don't even mention how his soulmate is fated to die if they ever kiss, because Donghyuck has already forgotten about it. Seriously, it doesn't even bother him. Really.Based off of Maggie Stiefvater's 'The Raven Cycle' but it isn't necessary to have read the series to understand.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my fic<3 Here are some things you should know before reading:
> 
> ~The world and aspects of the plot/characters are based off of Maggie Stiefvater's 'The Raven Cycle' but as we go forward, there will be more divergence as I adapt it to suit my purpose. Just because you've read the books doesn't mean you'll know what will happen in this fic!  
> ~Not all characters correspond directly to a specific Raven Cycle character. Most of them are mash-ups of multiple characters, combined with my interpretation of the actual individual. As such, some characters might seem OOC but I've tried to keep the core of who that person is similar to the character. Many more NCT members will be introduced as the fic goes on.  
> ~As of right now, I'm not sure how long this will be. I was initially planning for three long chapters, but brevity is not my friend, so that definitely won't be happening. I'm really hoping its less than 10 chapters, for both of our sakes.  
> ~I think I'll be updating every other week, if I can restrain myself. I have about 12,000 words written so far, but it took me a month to get there. The upcoming chapters will be much longer than this.  
> ~The idea for writing this came from [ this](https://twitter.com/GENeesback/status/1128317846323453952) twitter exchange I had on my main account with @GENeesback a little over a month ago.

The night air was hot and muggy in the cemetery, the kind of sticky Southern air common in the summer months, thick enough to choke on. Except it was April, and everyone in the backwoods township of Henrietta, Virginia was swallowing their disappointment that their prayers for a long winter had gone unanswered. Earlier that morning Donghyuck had been among the number of those cursing the oppressive, unseasonal heatwave, but tonight he could hardly even feel it. His skin crackled with energy, thrumming to life, as if his blood had turned static and wanted to leap out of his skin. If this was how he felt, he could only imagine how it would be for everyone else, but a quick glance toward his companions told him that they were calm and unruffled. If they could feel the same electrifying energy in the air that Donghyuck did, they hid it well.  


He wanted to ask his father about it, but before he could, a gentle hand cradled his shoulder.  


“Don’t,” Jungwoo advised, his voice even softer than usual. “He’s concentrating.”  


Once Donghyuck looked closer, he realized that should have been obvious. Unlike Donghyuck, his father was never one to fidget, but the level of stillness was unnatural even for him. His straightforward gaze, though carefully blank, seemed focused on one area of the graveyard in particular, a crumbling stone archway toward the edge of the property, just along the woods. That must’ve been the gateway, the door between worlds.  


“Doyoung,” Joohyun murmured from his right. “They’re coming.”  


Donghyuck whipped his head toward the archway, though he knew he’d find nothing there. This was his first ghostwatch, the product of a year spent begging his parents and doing chores for Yerim so that she’d vouch for him. Yerim hated ghosts anyway, said they were mopey creeps who always ended up obsessed with haunting her, so in the end it wasn’t too much of a sacrifice for her to fake being too sick to record the names. They both knew they weren’t fooling anyone, but their parents allowed it anyway. On a danger scale of supernatural bad guys, ghosts would barely even make the ranking. Donghyuck was safe, as long as he didn’t do anything to startle them.  


“They aren’t ghosts yet,” Jungwoo reminded him, plucking the misconception from his mind like a surgeon would a tumor. “They’re just impressions. Think of them as echoes from the future.”  


Sometimes (most of the time), Donghyuck hated being the only non-psychic in a family of clairvoyants. Jungwoo flashed him a sheepish, apologetic smile, which Donghyuck ignored in favor of organizing the papers on his clipboard and testing out the pens he brought with him. He itched to say something, but he was too afraid that if he did, he’d disrupt some sacred psychic ritual and never get invited to anything like this again.  


Donghyuck very much wanted to be invited to something like this again.  


While Donghyuck busied himself scribbling with a ballpoint on the corner of his clipboard, the hairs on the back of his neck raised and a chill crept down his spine. The aforementioned hot and muggy air turned biting and crisp. The cicadas, which Donghyuck hadn’t even noticed as he was so used to them, gradually stopped chirping. A spectral silence permeated the graveyard, as if all the noise had been sucked up into a vacuum. Even though he’d never been able to see them, Donghyuck had been around enough ghosts to recognize the signs (Yerim wasn’t lying when she said ghosts were obsessed with her), though he’d never felt anything on this scale. Like thousands of eyes were watching him, talking about him, but he didn’t know who or where they were. He shivered, finally understanding Yerim’s distaste toward St. Mark’s Eve.  


Doyoung, Jungwoo and Joohyun all stepped forward, asking gentle but commanding questions to what looked like empty spaces, but Donghyuck knew must actually be where spirits stood. They would call out names to Donghyuck and he would eagerly jot them down on his clipboard, biting his lip the few times it was someone he recognized.  


The spirits that rose in graveyards on St. Mark’s Eve were the spirits of those who would die in Henrietta within the coming year. For a moderate annual fee, paid to the order of 300 Fox Way, home to the town psychics, the citizens of Henrietta could have themselves placed on a watchlist and be warned of their imminent death in advance. On the rare occasions that Donghyuck’s family actually did see a client on St. Mark's Eve, the client always spent their remaining time in a persistent haze of defeat and paranoia, but it didn’t stop the watchlist from being one of the most popular services they provided. Joohyun had said multiple times that humans were drawn toward and repulsed by death in equal measure, that the fear and fascination never left their minds, even when they didn’t realize it.  


Donghyuck was writing down the name of his third grade teacher when he noticed the figure of a boy walking through the stone archway, glancing around at his surroundings with genial curiosity. Donghyuck tensed, having already been lectured half a dozen times that any disruption to the ritual would cause the spirits to become agitated and uncooperative, but no one in his family seemed concerned by the boy’s presence. The boy wasn’t doing anything particularly disruptive, just standing there, but still. If Donghyuck hadn’t even been allowed to wait in the car during a ghostwatch for his entire childhood, there was no way he would allow some random kid to witness the main event.  


“Dad,” Donghyuck whispered urgently, walking over to tug on Doyoung’s sleeve. “Dad,” he repeated when he was ignored.  


Doyoung twisted around to give Donghyuck an impressive glare. “What did I tell you about interrupting during the ritual, Donghyuck?”  


Donghyuck resisted the urge to scowl back. His father only called him by his real name when he’d done something awful. “You should tell it to him then,” Donghyuck sulked, gesturing toward the interloping boy in question. Now that he was closer, he could see that the boy was wearing an Aglionby uniform, which only increased his bitterness. It figured that a raven boy would be the only person in Henrietta entitled enough to interrupt a St. Mark’s Eve ritual.  


Doyoung’s gaze followed his gesture and for a moment a look of unsettlement crossed over his face before it dissipated from his features like it was never there to begin with.  


“You see someone?” he asked, tone carefully measured.  


“Um, yeah,” Donghyuck snorted. His expression turned hopeful. “Can I please be the one to kick him out?”  


Doyoung shook his head.  


Donghyuck scowled. No one ever let him do anything interesting. “Should I get Aunt Joohyun then?”  


Doyoung shook his head again and Donghyuck’s blood burned to the point where he wondered if he might combust. The most awful thing about living with psychics wasn’t that it was near impossible to keep secrets or that their house always smelled like the inside of a spice shop. The most awful thing about living with psychics was that they always expected you to know what they were thinking, what they wanted you to do without having to tell you. It drove Donghyuck to the edge of insanity.  


“What should I do then?” he snapped.  


Doyoung looked at his son, then at the Aglionby boy thoughtfully.  


“Do what tonight is for,” he finally suggested. “Ask him his name.”  


Shock rendered Donghyuck speechless for all of fifteen seconds.  


“His name? Why? He’s not- He can’t be- I wouldn’t be able to see him if-”  


“Go,” Doyoung interrupted. It was an order and nothing less.  


Donghyuck made his way over to the boy. Joohyun and Jungwoo watched him, with suspicious and serene expressions respectively, but Donghyuck was only focused on the boy.  


Up close, it became more obvious that the Aglionby boy was a spirit. His eyes didn’t seem to be focused on anything, meandering aimlessly around the cemetery. His form seemed almost fuzzy around the edges, his coloring dull, like he was pulled straight out of an old Technicolor film from the 1950’s. Strangely, the Aglionby uniform, which Donghyuck had only ever seen in pristine condition, was dirty and torn. Despite the oddness of his being a spirit and the unusually unkempt uniform, he looked like a normal boy. Normal for Aglionby Academy at least, which was to say he carried himself with a confidence and ease that none of the boys at Donghyuck’s public school possessed.  


He had a wiry frame and couldn’t have been more than an inch taller than Donghyuck, but his shoulders were broad and he filled out his tattered uniform well. Sharp cheekbones jutted out from under smooth, almost waxen skin, making small caverns out of his cheeks that only served to emphasize his square jaw. He wore round, wire-rimmed glasses that suited his compact, angular face and made him look softer without diminishing the effect of his strong features.  


In short, Donghyuck thought he was quite attractive, but that was neither here nor there.  


“Um. Hi,” Donghyuck said after a moment. He lifted his hand in an awkward sort of half-wave.  


The boy’s gaze shifted to Donghyuck’s face and his form seemed to solidify into focus. He didn’t seem surprised to see Donghyuck there and Donghyuck wondered if you suddenly knew things about the world if you were a spirit or if this boy had stopped caring about wanting to know what was going on. He was watching Donghyuck with a slight, rueful smile on his face.  


“Hello,” he greeted Donghyuck. His voice was raspy and slightly garbled, like Donghyuck was hearing him speak through a closed door, or over an old-fashioned radio transmission. “I guess this is it then?”  


Donghyuck shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. I’m sorry, dude.”  


The boy chuckled. “Don’t be. I knew it was coming.”  


Donghyuck frowned. A thousand questions threatened to overflow from his chest, but he calmed himself by thinking of what Jungwoo told him so many times when he was a curious little kid. _If you ask the spirits too many questions, they get moody and disperse. That’s why we only ever ask their name. Sometimes they don’t even want to give us that._  


The boy didn’t seem as flighty or recalcitrant as most spirits apparently were, but Donghyuck wasn’t going to take any chances.  


“What’s your name?” he asked, instead.  


The boy tilted his neck back, so that he was gazing up at the night sky. Donghyuck got the sense that the spirit was disappointed more than angry or afraid. He started to feel a gnawing sort of worry for this boy, not much older than Donghyuck, whose life would be cut so short. Even the Aglionby uniform couldn’t have made him seem inhuman in that moment.  


The boy’s gaze fell back on Donghyuck before he realized. It was intense and purposeful, nothing like it had been earlier, nothing like how spirits were supposed to be. He wasn’t smiling anymore.  


“My name is Mark,” he said. “Mark Lee.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed this fake prologue that's really just part of the first chapter bc i got impatient and wanted to post something! upcoming chapters will be a lot lengthier and more informative. please don't hesitate to leave a comment with any questions!! it really helps and i also just love interacting with you all lol<3 
> 
> hit me up on:  
> [ twt](https://twitter.com/feministkrystal)  
> [ cc](https://curiouscat.me/feministkrystal)


	2. chapter one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! i know i said i'd probably post every other week, but i felt weird just leaving this out here with such a small portion of the story. so here's this:) 
> 
> also, in this chapter, i mention donghyuck wearing lip gloss. i've been thinking a lot about certain things that made me wary to include that in my story, so if you want to know my thoughts behind that decision, i'll put them in the end notes.

Donghyuck sat in the back of the family Volkswagen, staring at the clipboard in front of him. He should’ve been going over the list, trying to see any faces he could put to the names, but all he could do was stare at the last name on the page and wonder what was so important about Mark Lee, that he could see him and no other spirit.  


When he tried asking Doyoung, Jungwoo and Joohyun the same question, they offered him varying responses that were all equally as unhelpful. Joohyun scowled and told him never to trust boys like she always did, Jungwoo just smiled and told him he’d figure it out eventually like he always did and his own father rolled his eyes, blatantly ignoring the question like he never did. Even when Doyoung wouldn’t tell Donghyuck the truth, he always explained why.  


His parents’ lack of transparency was frustrating, but not surprising. He sometimes had more luck with Yerim, who thought the fact that he didn’t have any psychic abilities hilarious and loved to lord her superior knowledge over his head. Donghyuck always thought she was a pathetic excuse for an empath, but the one time he voiced the thought out loud she laughed in his face and told him that all the best serial killers were also empaths. Knowing her, he didn’t doubt it.  


Doyoung turned a corner and Donghyuck was comforted by the sight of 300 Fox Way rolling into view. At first glance there wasn’t much that differentiated Donghyuck’s family home from the other houses on their street, but much like it’s inhabitants, the closer you looked the more oddities you found. The structure wasn’t unique for their neighborhood: a two-story ranch style coated in chipped paint. 300 Fox Way might have once been blue, but it was now a grayish color that seemed to get more drab every year. Unlike the other houses in the neighborhood however, a line of salt circled their property, somehow never shifted by wind or rain. Instead of flower beds, Doyoung kept elemental herb gardens, neat circles planned around a stone altar he found when he first came to Henrietta. Comfrey, thyme and mugwort for air; basil, marigold and rosemary for fire; burdock, chamomile and meadowsweet for water; sage, pennyroyal and cinquefoil for earth. Their front lawn was dotted with colorful garden gnomes, nothing too unusual for rural Virginia, but theirs all had their eyes gouged out, courtesy of thirteen year old Yerim’s whimsy. Joohyun grounded her for a week after she did it, but the disfigured gnomes stayed where they were and Donghyuck saw her smirking at their neighbor’s startled reaction the following morning. Jungwoo’s contribution to their eclectic dwelling was a line of crystals dotting their gravel walkway and the canopy of wind chimes hanging over their wrap-around porch, a jangling symphony Donghyuck had fallen asleep to since childhood.  


Inside, the ancient floorboards creaked, one of their two bathrooms was consistently out of order and there were more people than bedrooms. Still, for as much as Donghyuck yearned to break out of Henrietta, he couldn’t imagine any other place suiting him as well as 300 Fox Way did.  


Doyoung pulled into the gravel driveway, allowing Joohyun and Jungwoo to spill out of the car, hurrying toward the side screen door that led into the kitchen. Maintaining enough energy to interact with the spirits on St. Mark’s Eve was debilitating and Taeil had promised to have dinner ready for them when they got home. Donghyuck was making to follow them inside to their questionable meal, when Doyoung stopped him dead.  


“Hyuck,” he began, just as Donghyuck’s hand grazed the door handle. “I don’t have to tell you not to kiss anyone, right?”  


Something painful constricted in Donghyuck’s chest. There were many varied aspects to Doyoungs’s personality; he was sarcastic, nurturing and high-strung in equal measure, but Donghyuck had only rarely seen this side of him. His voice was low, careful, as if he were trying to disguise how urgently he felt his words.  


Donghyuck swallowed, a failed attempt to dislodge the lump in his throat. The kissing problem had seemed so abstract in his youth, too ridiculous to be taken seriously. He tried not to think about how real and disappointing it started to seem over the past few years.  


“Of course not,” he answered, unable to hide the note of sulkiness that slipped out. “I’d never.”  


“Good, good,” Doyoung nodded absently. He stayed seated, staring out the window at the top of the massive oak tree that grew in the center of their backyard, just visible beyond their house. Donghyuck got the distinct impression that not only was he being dismissed, but that he’d failed to convince his father. Given Doyoung’s psychic abilities, that didn’t bode well for the fate of Donghyuck’s promise.  


Donghyuck left his father in the car and went into the kitchen. Taeil was frowning over a large, bubbling pot of what must’ve been stew, but smelled like one of Doyoung’s migraine tinctures, which was to say that it smelled like peppermint and butterbur. He was wearing Jungwoo’s pink _Kiss the Chef!_ apron and oven mitts, though all he was holding was a wooden spoon.  


Taeil was the newest addition to 300 Fox Way, having only lived with them for a little over a year. He used to be one of Doyoung’s clients and though Doyoung never said it out loud, they all knew he was his favorite. One evening, Taeil came to them all the way from Louisville, soaked to the bone with rainwater, teeth chattering, expression as blank and unreadable as always. Doyoung took one hard look at him and asked if he wanted to move in. Taeil had been sleeping on the sofa in their living room ever since, and showed no signs of wanting to move out.  


At first, Donghyuck whined and sulked about it, insisting that their house would burst at the seams if they took in any more strays, but he was the only one who dared complain. Doyoung was the best at reading an individual’s energy and unraveling their intentions. If he said Taeil could be trusted, then Taeil could be trusted, no questions asked.  


It took about a month before Donghyuck gave up on hating Taeil. Over time, it became apparent that wasn’t nearly as cold as he seemed, though he was just as stiff. Taeil was the kind of man who did crunches on their coffee table to see if they were more effective, yet somehow always imbued their chaotic household with a much needed sense of calm. If Donghyuck were being honest with himself, he’d admit that part of the reason he loved having Taeil live with them so much was because it was a comfort not to be the only non-psychic in the house anymore.  


More than a comfort. A relief.  


Now, the sight of Taeil in their kitchen served as a soothing balm for Donghyuck, who grinned and launched himself at the older man, wrapping his arms around his waist.  


Taeil allowed himself to be clung to, absentmindedly patting Donghyuck’s hair as he continued to stare down at the stew. “I thought adding herbs from the garden would make it taste better…” he muttered.  


Donghyuck eyed the pot. The liquid inside was off-white and chunky. “I’ll try some,” he shrugged. If anyone else tried to serve him a stew that looked like that, he’d laugh in their face.  
“Don’t worry, my mom ordered pizzas,” Yerim called from across the room.  


Donghyuck looked toward the voice and found his cousin at their rickety kitchen table, painting her nails a sparkling amethyst color. The family’s landline was pressed between her shoulder and her ear, but she clearly wasn’t paying attention to whoever was on the other line.  


“No, not for you,” she sighed into the phone, rolling her eyes for Donghyuck and Taeil’s benefit. “Hold on a second… something is coming through. Oh my God. You’re an Aries, right?...An Aquarius, yeah, that’s what I thought… anyway, a spirit just told me that all Aquarians are going to be have a passionate love affair this week, but only if they start looking right away. That bar that just opened down the street? It’s a sign… okay, it’s a cafe, same difference… yes, go get ‘em girl!... No, we don’t accept health insurance, sorry… same time next week?... Great, bye!”  


Yerim heaved a sigh of relief as she hung up the phone. 300 Fox Way’s telephone readings were exclusively Yerim’s domain, as none of their parents would have anything to do with them. It was exceedingly rare for an individual to emit so much psychic energy that it came through over the phone, but as an empath, Yerim was adept at telling people what they needed (or wanted) to hear, even when she couldn’t read them. Doyoung grumbled for a while about principles when he found out about it, but in the end, the extra income was too good to pass up. Also, the phone calls raised their Yelp rating, a fact Doyoung would most likely still be complaining about on his deathbed.  


“What happened?” Yerim demanded. She waved her hand in excitement, forgetting the nail polish brush was still in hand, resulting in a splattering of purple on the wall behind her. It matched the Sharpie scribblings she and Donghyuck had made when they were children. “Mom’s upstairs ironing the curtains. The curtains, Hyuck. And Uncle Jungwoo is calling on his ancestors for advice or something? I don’t know though, I think that might just be a euphemism for taking a nap. God, if I’d known something interesting was actually going to happen I never would’ve let you take my place.”  


Donghyuck hesitated. He and Yerim grew up together, shared a room until she was twelve and he was eleven. He loved her. She looked out for him at school, helped him with his AP chem coursework and recommended him for his job at Nino’s. He also knew that you had to be careful about what information you shared with her, that one seemingly innocuous detail of his life could become fodder for years of teasing.  


At the same time, it was obvious that none of the parents were going to be very forthcoming about what actually happened that night, about why he could see the spirit of that Mark Lee boy when he wasn’t even psychic. Being honest with Yerim might be his best bet.  


“I saw someone at the graveyard,” he said, before he lost the courage. “A boy. A spirit.”  


For a minute, the only sound that could be heard were the cicadas through their screen door, but then Yerim guffawed, accidentally flinging more nail polish around the kitchen.  


Taeil extricated himself from Donghyuck’s embrace, his brow furrowed in what might’ve been a quizzical expression. It was difficult to tell with Taeil, a master of stoicism.  


“I thought only psychics could see ghosts?” he asked, turning the stove off. He seemed to have given up on improving the soup and went to dump it into the sink.  


“They aren’t ghosts, they’re spirits,” Yerim corrected automatically, raising her voice to be heard over the gurgling roar of the garbage disposal that Taeil had turned on. “Spirits are the spark of life that makes you you, while ghosts are leftover energy, usually ripped violently from someone’s spirit. Everyone has a spirit, living or dead. Only people who die traumatic, unresolved deaths leave behind a ghost when they depart the physical realm. Psychics can always see ghosts, but usually, spirits are invisible to everyone. St. Mark’s Eve is the one exception, just a temporal anomaly. A hiccup in the space/time continuum.”  


“Psychics are the only ones who can see them on St. Mark’s Eve though, right? If that’s true, then why could Hyuck see one?”  


Donghyuck nodded vigorously, grateful Taeil was asking the questions so that he didn’t have to.  


Yerim screwed the nail polish cap back on, even though she still hadn’t painted her right pinky. There was a peculiar expression on her face, one that didn’t suit her. She was grinning, but there was no humor behind it.  


“There are only two reasons why a non-psychic would be able to see a spirit. Neither of them are very fun, Hyuckie.”  


Donghyuck played with the strings of his purple sweatshirt. If even Yerim was being cautious, the answer must’ve been truly awful. A part of him wanted to leave it at that, pretend like he’d never known the Aglionby boy existed, but he knew he’d never be satisfied with just that.  


“Tell me,” he pleaded with Yerim, softly. “I need to know.”  


Yerim looked at him searchingly. She must’ve found what she was looking for, because she nodded.  


“Okay, I’ll bite. There are only two reasons why you’d see a spirit as a non-psychic. Either that boy is your true love, or you killed him.”  


Donghyuck paled. There was always a chance Yerim was joking with him, and the explanation was just ridiculous enough for that to be plausible, but he knew she wasn’t.  


“True love?” Taeil queried. “That’s a bit… fairytale like, isn’t it?”  


Yerim shrugged. “The fairy tales had to get it from somewhere. True love, soulmate, destiny, call it what you want. The definition’s never really been clear. It never is with magic that ancient. Still, there are some people… it’s obvious to people like us that they have a connection with someone out there in the world, someone who fits them perfectly, someone that they’ll definitely meet. You can see it in their aura fields, like an electric charge. We’ve always known that Hyuck had one.”  


“So… that means that the boy Hyuck saw at the graveyard tonight is definitely his soulmate, right? Because there’s no way he would ever kill anyone.”  


Yerim raised her eyebrows as Donghyuck squirmed. His true love (he couldn’t help but cringe every time the mawkish words crossed his mind) was not a subject he felt comfortable with. Especially now that he knew it was probably that Aglionby boy, that Mark Lee, who looked like he represented everything Donghyuck ever stood against; entitlement and privilege and pastel polo shirts.  


Like most working class towns that played host to expensive schools, the tension between the locals of Henrietta and the student body of Aglionby Academy was always on the verge of spilling over. Every September the Mercedes’ rolled in and the town collectively held its breath, awe and jealousy successfully masked as hostility and resentment.  


Donghyuck would say that he was no different, except that his resentment contained no jealousy. Raven boys, so named for the ominous unkindness of ravens emblazoned on their crest, treated Henrietta like they were frat boys at an anthropological site, watching grown men bag groceries and take their McDonald’s order with equal amounts of fascination and condescending amusement. Donghyuck had to witness it every weekend when he worked at Nino’s, the greasy pizza parlor almost exclusively attended to by raven boys. The way they complained about the state of their Ivy League applications (“at this point I’ll be lucky to get into Cornell. Don’t you dare have a laugh at my expense, Xavier, I’m serious”) or casually referenced things Donghyuck knew he wasn’t stupid for not understanding (“Thoreau clearly never met my mother… without institutionalized spin classes she’s an epic nightmare of Ahab proportions”) made him taste metal on his tongue. To think that they, who had everything they could ever want handed to them, could do anything that they wanted to in life and didn’t even appreciate it, when Donghyuck would be lucky if his family could afford to send him to a state school…  


Perhaps there was a little bit of jealousy involved after all.  


Now though, that jealousy was tinged with guilt as well. For something that he hadn’t even done.  


Yet, at least.  


Yerim looked back and forth at Donghyuck and Taeil.  


“You don’t know about Donghyuck’s curse yet?” she asked.  


Taeil’s eyes became almost comically large.  


“Hyuck is cursed?” he asked, at the same time that Donghyuck tightened the strings of his hoodie around his face in embarrassment.  


“It’s not a curse Yerim, God,” he groaned. “Don’t be so dramatic.”  


“Fine, a prophecy, then,” she amended. “You are no longer a Disney princess, you are now a Harry Potter-esque Chosen One. Happy?”  


Donghyuck opened his mouth to protest that title as well, but Taeil interrupted.  


“Will one of you please just explain to me what you’re talking about?”  


Donghyuck trusted Taeil, but if he had to tell the story himself he might just die of humiliation before he could finish. Yerim, sensing this, took over the task for him, with relish.  


Like all children, Donghyuck’s story started with a parent.  


On one temperate autumn day in the year 2000, bracketed by a canopy of titian leaves, an aged nineteen Kim Doyoung could be found driving through an obscure little town called Henrietta, on his way to visit an ailing great-aunt in West Virginia. His drive was going perfectly to plan until he heard a loud, sonorous humming noise emanating from the town. Perhaps normally, since he was in a rush, he would’ve ignored the noise and kept driving. But Doyoung was a psychic, a good one, and so was everyone in his family. He knew the humming wasn’t just humming. He could hear it rising from the earth and knew instinctively that whatever was happening was ancient and important. So he pulled over and followed the noise, tracing it to the loudest point. He walked for over an hour, through backyards and parking lots, until the sound led him to an overgrown clearing in the forest. The way Doyoung describes it, the trees were trembling in excitement and ravens circled the sky in such a dense unkindness that they cast a shadow over the clearing, a sight that would have been frightening or at least foreboding, if Doyoung hadn’t found it quite so bewitching.  


A voice in his mind: _He’s close._  


Then, a voice from a few feet away: “Oh. You’re here.”  


Doyoung had looked up, startled, to find Jungwoo sitting on a log, meditating. The psychic community, being as small as it was, was fairly close knit, so Doyoung had seen Jungwoo around at various conventions and seminars over the years. They hardly knew each other though, Doyoung’s family settled evenly across the Appalachians, while Jungwoo’s clan resided mostly in Florida.  


Jungwoo pointed to a quivering tree. “An acorn is going to fall off that branch before I can finish-”  


An acorn fell to the ground.  


Doyoung and Jungwoo looked at each other. That sort of precision was not normal for psychics. Typically, psychics were most useful when it came to decisions- they could feel where a path diverged and explore both options, get a general sense of what outcome lay on either side. Occasionally, they could tell which path an individual was most likely to take, but never with any certainty. As long as people had free will, life would always be unexpected, even to the most practiced of psychics.  


That wasn’t so much the case in Henrietta, Doyoung and Jungwoo were to come to find. Henrietta was a place where things that shouldn’t have been allowed to happen happened. Almost every spell they tried worked, the accuracy of their predictions ascended to heights hitherto unheard of and ghosts were nearly as common as house cats.  


Doyoung never did make it to his great-aunt’s house in West Virginia.  


He and Jungwoo pooled together their savings and bought a house near the cemetery, a dilapidated old thing with enough space for a sizable garden. They set up their shop, inviting all who were interested to get their fortune told or buy their home remedies. A psychic’s paradise.  


Not long after settling in Henrietta, Doyuong met Donghyuck’s mother.  


Donghyuck didn’t know much about his mother. He didn’t know her name, what she looked like, exactly where she was from. All he knew was that she was a traveller from far away, who was probably never coming back to town.  


She left the newborn Donghyuck on the porch of 300 Fox Way in a wicker basket, with no note attached. Donghyuck never asked how Doyoung was sure Donghyuck was his son if that was the only evidence; he’d rather not know the answer.  


Jungwoo had taken one look at baby Donghyuck in the basket and sighed. “If he ever kisses his true love, they’ll die.”  


Doyoung had nodded solemnly. He was barely twenty, with a mortgage and a newborn baby to take care of. “I know.”  


He called his older half-sister, Joohyun, who was a newly single mother herself. They decided to raise their children together, like they were, in this strange and wonderful land of psychic possibility. She’d said the same thing when she first laid eyes on Donghyuck, that if he ever kisses his true love they’ll die, and so had every half-way decent psychic Donghyuck had ever met.  


He’d heard it so often as a toddler, before the words made any sense to him, that he never let himself get too attached to the idea of finding his one true love, the way so many other children did. He had better things to do than think about kissing anyone, would roll his eyes whenever anyone made any sort of reference toward romantic love, convinced himself that he was above that sort of thing. As far as he was concerned, his true love could fuck off. They weren’t needed.  


Donghyuck’s conviction toward this ideology lessened as he got older. He was seventeen now and it would admittedly be nice to have someone to kiss. It didn’t have to be his true love.  


In fact, if his true love was going to go off and be a raven boy, especially one as obviously over-privileged as Mark Lee, he’d actually prefer it.  


Donghyuck only realized Yerim was finished telling Taeil about his kissing situation when he felt a hand ruffle his hair.  


“I’m sorry Hyuck,” Taeil said, sounding genuinely concerned for him. “That must be really difficult.”  


Donghyuck blinked up at Taeil. “Meh. It’s alright. At least now I have an idea of who to avoid.”  


“That’s sad, Hyuck,” Taeil said, gently. “If he’s your true love…”  


Donghyuck was fierce in his reply. “Being with my true love isn’t the only way I can be happy,” he insisted. It was a lesson Doyoung had drilled into his head from the time he could comprehend language.  


“He’s right,” Yerim pointed out, easily. She resumed painting her remaining finger. “Being an obnoxious, attention obsessed baby is the only way he can be happy.”  


“Exactly,” Donghyuck agreed, pleased.  


The pizzas arrived not long after, much to everyone’s relief. They ate with haste before decamping to their respective domains of the house. 300 Fox Way was a two and a half bedroom home- Doyoung and Jungwoo in one room, Joohyun in the other. Yerim slept in their unfinished basement, a dark and uninviting room she’d tried to liven up by draping colorful, silk scarves along the walls and pinning glow in the dark stars to the ceiling. She could never quite manage to conceal the way gloom clung to the walls; when Donghyuck shared with her as a child, he had nightmares more often than sleepless nights.  


Donghyuck himself moved into their small attic when he was eleven, after Jungwoo had a dream that Yerim would run away if she didn’t get her own room by the time she turned thirteen. They had previously used the attic to store Yuletide decorations, and Donghyuck living there didn’t mean they found a new location for them. Once they squeezed a twin sized mattress into the corner and a dresser next to the box of red and gold Yule candles, Donghyuck’s room was ready. He didn’t mind that he hit his head on the ceiling almost every morning and that it was too cold in the winter but too hot in the summer; there was a view of his favorite oak tree from the one circular window and he had his own space. In a house as cramped as 300 Fox Way, this was a valuable resource.  


Despite Donghyuck’s nocturnal tendencies, he was exhausted by the time he collapsed into his mattress, the type of weariness that seeped into his bones and made his muscles ache. A heavy fog clouded his brain and, his mind being as addled with sleeplessness as it was, he didn’t realize that Doyoung had never left the car, that he was still sitting in the driver’s seat, staring at the oak tree in their yard, a frown on his face.

~~~

Mark cursed under his breath, barely managing to pull off the road before his baby blue Cadillac, affectionately called Jane, stuttered to a halt. Dawn was just beginning to break, the Henrietta sky a watercolor of purple and orange. Classes would be starting in a few hours, but he hadn’t slept for even a moment. It wouldn’t be the first time he sat through an Aglionby lecture after pulling an all-nighter, nor was it likely to be the last, but this time it felt different. There was a preoccupied haze in his mind, one he doubted any amount of green tea could fix.  


Instead of calling Jeno or Renjun for roadside assistance, like he knew he should, he took out his EVP recorder and pressed play. He had to hear it one more time.  


There was the static he was all too familiar with, the garbled speech from hopping across so many radio frequencies with such rapidity. Then, like he remembered, the static fizzed, lowering several decibels. A voice rose above the crackling, one with a honeyed, textured tone.  


“Um, hi,” the pleasant voice on the recorder greeted. Whoever was speaking sounded wary and a little sharp.  


“Hello,” someone replied. Mark felt a strange tingling sensation at his nape, the hair on his arms standing at attention. “I guess this is it then?”  


“Yeah. I’m sorry dude.” The voice lost some of its sharpness, something like guilt or sympathy filtering through.  


“Don’t be. I knew it was coming.”  


There was a pause in the conversation, and Mark could remember so clearly the first time he heard the conversation, how he leant forward in his seat, mouth dry, wondering what that disembodied voice could possibly know that he didn’t.  


“What’s your name?” the first voice asked.  


“My name is Mark,” Mark said out loud, in chorus with the voice over the recording. “Mark Lee.”  


He’d known as soon as he first heard the conversation in the church parking lot near Henrietta’s oldest cemetery that the second voice on the recording belonged to him. Except he had no memory of that conversation, had no idea what the conversation was even about. What he did know was what the legends said: that St. Mark's Eve was a time where the ghosts of those who would die in the coming year walked their earthly plain.  


Mark managed to suppress the shudder that threaten to disturb his equilibrium. He didn’t particularly want to die, but there were more important things to worry about. If he was going to die sometime in the next year, it meant his time to discover the Sleeping King was running out. He’d have to accelerate the pace of his quest if he really wanted to find answers.  


At least now he had something promising to go off of. Operating under the assumption that it really was Mark’s ghost on the EVP, the boy he was talking to clearly knew something about the supernatural. Perhaps he would have some insight or clues that could help Mark and his friends on their quest.  


His phone rang. Mark looked down and grinned at the caller ID.  


“Jen-O!” he boomed. “I was just thinking of you.”  


“Where are you?” Jeno demanded. He sounded tense, which had become his permanent state of being over the past year. “You didn’t come home last night, did you?”  


“When my ghostly duty calls,” Mark sang, by way of answering.  


Jeno didn’t bother stifling his snort. “Find anything good at least?”  


Mark hummed, stroking his EVP recorder like it was a beloved pet. He should wait to tell Jeno and Renjun in person, so they could listen to the recording before making any judgements. “Something like that.”  


“You’ll be back in time for Japanese, right? You’ve already skipped once this semester, you really can’t do it again.”  


“About that,” Mark began. He donned a winning smile, wide and affable, even though Jeno couldn’t see him. If Mark was looking in a mirror at that moment he might have recognized the smile as the one his mother wore when she was talking to her constituents in public and knew there were cameras watching. He wasn’t though, so he didn’t. “Jane isn’t feeling too well at the moment, so she’s decided to take a little rest. We’re stuck off Cherry Street if you feel like coming down to give her a boost.”  


There was a long pause on the other line. Mark could so easily picture Jeno standing in their kitchen eating a bowl of plain oatmeal because that was all he knew how to make, wrestling with whether or not he should rescue Mark or leave him stranded to teach him a lesson he’d been trying to teach him for years: that flashy, vintage cars are meant to be tucked away in garages or carefully driven along the PCH once a year, not used as every day transportation in some Southern backwater. Jeno of last year wouldn’t have hesitated to do the former, but this newer version of Jeno, so irrevocably altered by grief, was a different animal altogether.  


In the end, he relented. Jeno always relented to Mark. That at least hadn’t changed.  


“Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll get Renjun.”  


Mark’s politician’s grin melted into his own: sweet and sunny. “Would it be too much to ask for you to bring me some McDonalds while you’re at it? I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday.”  


Not long after Jeno hung up without promising to bring Mark his McMuffin, a beat-up old station wagon with a sizeable dent in it’s side huffed past, with the windows cranked down. The car (if one could call it that) was being driven by a delicately pretty middle aged woman, though there was nothing delicate about the scowl on the woman’s face, aimed in Mark’s direction. An equally pretty teenage girl who looked like she was around Mark’s age was in the passenger’s seat, graceful hand extended out the window so Mark could just make out her vibrant purple nails, feral smirk engraved into her lips.  


Mark grinned and waved in what he knew was a charming manner, hoping it would be enough for them to stop and help so he could call off Jeno, but judging by the middle finger the woman in the driver’s seat sent his way, he didn’t think it was. He was used to that type of behavior from townspeople; he’d stopped being fazed by it a couple weeks into his freshman year at Aglionby. As the car drove away, he saw that the back was littered with bumper stickers. The classic ‘COEXIST’ was front and center, framed by a faded ‘OBAMA ‘08’ and one that read ‘In Goddess We Trust’. While the standoffish behavior was typical from the citizens of Henrietta, the left-leaning bumper stickers were not.  
Jeno’s black Tesla coasted over about twenty minutes after the station wagon passed. Renjun was the first to exit, jumping from the expensive car as if he were trying to escape. He liked Mark’s convertible, because even though Jane was not an average car, she still broke down and stalled on hills; Jeno’s swiftly updated collection of luxury vehicles was another matter entirely. Jeno got out after him at his own pace, clutching a paper McDonalds bag in hand.  


Mark’s entire face lit up at the sight.  


“Yooo, you’re my hero!” he called, bounding over to take the bag from Jeno’s hands.  


“Am I suddenly invisible?” Renjun huffed. He had already lifted Jane’s hood and was peering inside with the eyes of an expert. The shirt to his Aglionby uniform had a new hole at the elbow, but Mark knew better than to comment on it. “Seriously, don’t mind me, I’m just the guy who’s healing your child. Again.”  


“Aw, Injunnie,” Mark cooed, tearing into his breakfast sandwich. “No need to get jealous. You’re my superhero. Who else could help me with Jane like you do?”  


“It’s never really that complicated,” Renjun deflected, rolling his eyes. Still, Mark could tell he was pleased with the compliment, a slight smile betraying his true feelings.  


True to Renjun’s words, Jane was up and running after just a few minutes of tinkering.  


“She’ll be fine for a while, but she’ll break down again eventually,” Renjun said, searching for something to wipe his hands with. Mark would’ve just used his pants, but Renjun wouldn’t dare mar his own slacks with grease stains. Before Mark could fish through his fast food bag for some crumpled up napkins, Jeno thrust one of their old hand towels in Renjun’s direction. He must’ve anticipated the need.  


Renjun’s eyes widened at the gesture. “Oh! Thanks.”  


“Don’t worry about it,” Jeno shrugged, as if it were nothing. He quickly turned to Mark. “Well? Are you going to share what you found with the rest of the class?”  


Mark, recalling the EVP recorder in his car, dropped the rest of the sandwich back in the bag, all previously overwhelming famine forgotten.  


“Right,” he said, going to get the recorder. As he lifted it out of the car, the worrying thought that the recorded conversation with his voice was somehow a figment of his imagination crossed his mind, an extreme example of confirmation bias that would become apparent in front of other people. It was too late to back out though; he pressed play.  


Jeno and Renjun both tensed at the first sound of his voice and, like a slackened rubber band, Mark felt his muscles relax. He wasn’t delusional.  


No one said anything after the recording stopped, for over a minute.  


Then, Renjun.  


“There are a lot of people out there named Mark Lee,” he pointed out. “Like, a lot. I’m just saying, it’s very common.”  


Jeno jumped on the partially teasing explanation. “He’s right. I have cousins on both sides of my family named Mark Lee. If your parents really wanted you to go into politics, they should’ve chosen something more distinctive.”  


Mark snorted, rolling his eyes. “Shut up. You both know that was my voice.”  


Neither of his friends denied it.  


“Who was the other voice?” Renjun asked. “The one you were talking to.”  


“That’s exactly what I want to find out.”  


Renjun and Jeno exchanged a glance. They both knew they were about to get on a train that wouldn’t stop until long after it burned out of fuel. Whenever anything even remotely possibly connected to the supernatural happened around Mark, his tunnel vision narrowed even further than it already was, until the only thing that existed was how it might relate to the Sleeping King. The other two followed, not out of any special interest in the Sleeping King, but because it was Mark. Mark had his king and they had theirs.  


Jeno’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a second, what was special about St. Mark’s Day again? Didn’t it have something to do with ghosts?”  


Mark considered his options. He could tell the truth and have them worry about him, but that seemed complicated. He lied instead.  


“Kind of,” he shrugged. This was as easy as breathing to him. “Ghosts are a lot more common on St. Mark’s Eve. Something about the veil of the Underworld being thinned. It’s basically just a day where a bunch of weird shit is supposed to happen.”  


Jeno accepted the answer easily enough. Both he and Renjun tended to take the world at face value, which Mark thought was ironic given the fact that they both wore such heavy masks most of the time. It probably had something to do with being a senator’s son, the ease with which Mark lied. Maybe in another lifetime he’d find deception more difficult, be unable to choke out a lie without stuttering or flushing, like Jeno used to do. He certainly hoped so.  


“Here,” Renjun said, breaking the atmosphere by slapping a small piece of paper onto Mark’s open hand. Mark blinked down at him to see that Renjun was blushing, avoiding his gaze. “I wasn’t going to bring it up because I didn’t know if you’d be into it, but someone left this at the garage last weekend. Maybe they could help us out.”  


The paper Renjun handed him was a business card, Mark realized. A handwritten business card, but in very neat print.  


_300 Fox Way, Henrietta’s premiere psychic service. Tarot, energy cleansing & more. By appointment only. Call or email to enquire about our services._  


Predictably, Mark had been to a lot of psychics in his life. Every single one had fed him empty compliments or vague predictions that could have applied to anyone. Many did so with a charisma and enthusiasm that was difficult to resist, but Mark was not a typical customer. He didn’t want assurances about his future or absolution from his past. He wanted one thing and one thing only.  


To find Taeyong, the Sleeping King.  


No phony psychic had ever helped him with that.  


Seeing one now couldn’t do any harm though. It was odd that he’d gone to school in Henrietta for so long now and had never visited the town psychic, even on a whim. Besides, Renjun so rarely initiated their hunt for clues. Mark wanted to encourage the impulse.  


“Let’s do it,” he enthused. “I’ll call this afternoon. Friday after school works for everyone?”

~~~

By the time Donghyuck’s eyes blinked open the morning after the St. Mark’s Eve ritual, the silent alarm clock on the floor by his mattress read 3:37 pm. He rolled over with a deep whine, burying his head into his pillows. Donghyuck was late to school almost every morning, thanks to his general disinterest and the chaotic nature of his household, but Doyoung never allowed him to skip entirely. Something was definitely up.  


Unable to stomach the thought of his limbs atrophying if he stayed in bed a moment longer, he crawled over to his dresser and looked for something to wear. He liked color and it showed, every open drawer looking like a bag of skittles had exploded inside. A yellow, floral shirt and denim cutoffs seemed appropriate for the day. Donghyuck had tried a more DIY goth look when he started high school, shredded black t-shirts from Goodwill and fingerless gloves made out of fishnet, but his classmates respected it too much. Now he wore his neon colors and mango flavored lip gloss like a uniform, delighting in the way everyone in Henrietta seemed to flinch whenever he walked by. He may not be psychic like everyone else in his family, but in the eyes of the townspeople, he was just as disquieting and bizarre.  


Downstairs in the living room, Taeil seemed to be hard at work on his next novel, benignly ignoring the many suggestions Jungwoo offered from his perch over his shoulder. Taeil wrote mysteries and spy thrillers, the kind of straight to paperback books you’d see on your way out of a grocery store. Donghyuck had never heard of them, but they must’ve made him a decent amount of money, as he was always going out of town on writer’s retreats and didn’t have any other job.  


Yerim lit up from where she had sunk into an armchair, scrolling through her phone, grinning at the sight of Donghyuck in a way that made him sure he was right about something being off.  


“Well, well, well. Look who finally decided to show his face.”  


“Where did you get an iPhone?” Donghyuck muttered, second-hand Motorola Razr burning a hole in his back pocket.  


She shrugged. “Not important. Dog-walking. We have more pressing matters to discuss.”  


Doyoung walked in from the garden just then, as if he could sense a conflict brewing, wearing dirty hiking boots and carrying a basket of herbs. He was frowning.  


“Yerim,” he warned. “Stop being so eager about it.”  


Doyoung set the basket down on a counter and kicked off his boots before collapsing onto the sofa, beckoning Donghyuck to join him. He did, situating himself so that he was half in Doyoung’s lap, head resting on his father’s shoulder. Yerim scoffed at the childlike display of affection, but Donghyuck ignored her.  


Doyoung kissed his forehead. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”  


“Morning,” Donghyuck replied, voice still thick with sleep. “Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?”  


Doyoung hummed, carding his fingers through Donghyuck’s curls. “You had a pretty big night. I thought you needed all the sleep you could get.”  


Silently, Donghyuck agreed. He hadn’t known exhaustion like he felt the night before in his entire life. He wondered if Mark Lee had anything to do with it, then quickly banished the thought from his head. From now on, Donghyuck’s mind would be a Mark Lee free zone, just like his life would be. After all, he couldn’t kiss him if he didn’t know him, and he wouldn’t kill him if he didn’t kiss him.  


“Also, Mark Lee is going to call here soon,” Yerim added, the words falling off her tongue like a rushing stream.  


Donghyuck tensed and peeled away from Doyoung so that he could look his father in the eye.  


“Is she telling the truth?” he asked.  


Doyoung paused before nodding. “Jungwoo had a dream. He and some friends will want a reading.”  


“He’s very polite,” Jungwoo agreed, finally leaving Taeil in peace. “There are worse soulmates to have.”  


Donghyuck scrunched up his face, pouting. “I’d rather have no soulmate, thanks.”  


Doyoung nodded in agreement. “Let’s just not answer the phone anymore.”  


Yerim laughed. “Then he’ll just show up at our door. Even I can sense that.”  


“So we’ll turn off all the lights and pretend not to be home!” Doyoung snapped, more out of anxiety than anger. “I don’t want him anywhere near Hyuck.”  


“Doyoung,” Jungwoo chided, gently. “He’s coming.”  


The way Jungwoo said it made it sound like he was already there. Donghyuck shivered and Doyoung’s shoulders slumped.  


“I know,” he muttered, miserable. He turned his calculating, cat-like eyes to his son. “Maybe you should arrange to spend the night with a friend while he’ll be here.”  


A harsh laugh died in Donghyuck’s throat. Everyone in the room knew that there were no friends to speak of.  


“It’s up to you, Donghyuck,” Jungwoo told him, gaze uncharacteristically sharp where it rested on his face. “If you want to be here to meet him, then you will be.”  


Donghyuck only had to look at Doyoung’s sour expression to know that Jungwoo was right. His parents often said things like that. They weren’t indications that they were okay with him doing something, just acknowledgments that there was nothing they could do to stop him and that it would happen no matter what.  


They did not mean that he got out of facing any consequences.  


Did Donghyuck want to be there for the reading, for the chance to meet Mark Lee?  


He opened his mouth to say no, he had no interest in meeting an over-privileged raven boy just because some stupid prophecy decided they were true loves and that Donghyuck was destined to kill him with his kiss or whatever, but he couldn’t make the thought manifest into speech. Rather embarrass himself trying, he closed his mouth and avoided his father’s gaze.  


“I see,” Doyoung said, and Donghyuck burned with shame at the disappointment laced in his tone.  


The phone rang.  


Yerim leapt up and made a mad dash for the corded landline in their kitchen, but Doyoung blocked her path, picking up the phone himself.  


“What do you want?” he hissed into the receiver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really hope you liked it!! thanks so much to everyone who commented and/or left kudos on the prologue: it really means so much to me. you are all angels. 
> 
> on donghyuck wearing lip gloss: 
> 
> first of all, i want to say that gender is a social construct and the ways that we express said gender are equally socially constructed. make-up has no gender. that being said, in our society it is inarguably more associated with the feminine. i bring this up, because i think it's a somewhat troubling trend within fandom (and increasingly within our society as a whole) to hyper-feminize one person in a gay male couple, to the point where it's become a trope, often slipping into the realm of fetishization. again, i want to reiterate THAT THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH IDENTIFYING AS ONE GENDER AND DOING SOMETHING THAT MIGHT BE CODED AS BELONGING TO A DIFFERENT GENDER, but it is NEVER okay to fetishize a human being. ever. this is especially troubling within fandoms such as this one, when the characters we write are based off of real people. i'm not trying to sit on a high horse and judge anyone; i've been guilty of this too. we can't control our preferences, but we do need to be conscientious of them and recognize when they can be harmful. i wrestled with the decision to have the donghyuck in my story wear makeup for a long time. in the original raven cycle, the character hyuck is based off of dresses very unusually because she wants to stand out- i wanted hyuck to do something similar, but i wanted the way he did it to suit his personality and our modern times. to me, being a boy who wore some makeup and bright colors seemed like a good way to do this, but i was worried i would be doing exactly what i just said we shouldn't be doing as a fandom and as society. but i don't think i am. there is a legitimate character based reason for that decision, there is no sexual coding behind that decision and it honestly isn't something central to the story or our understanding of donghyuck. he wears makeup to stand out in henrietta but fit into his eccentric family. also, he thinks it's fun and likes the way it looks, which is valid reason enough. sorry to go off for so long, i just didn't feel comfortable including that aspect without saying anything. do you think i'm being thorough to the point of ridiculousness? i probably am. that's kind of my m.o. 
> 
> thank you so much for listening! next up on andrea writes angrily on topic nobody asked about: alligators. they are my favorite animal for a variety of reasons, but they are often overlooked or misunderstood. in this essay i will...
> 
> [ twt](https://twitter.com/feministkrystal)  
> [ cc](https://curiouscat.me/feministkrystal)


	3. chapter two

Donghyuck was doing his best not to watch the clock on the oven, but the glowing green numbers called to him and he felt his gaze slide toward that direction once more.

4:54. Six minutes until Mark Lee was supposed to arrive at their doorstep, accompanied by his royal retinue.

 _This is a normal time to be a little early,_ Donghyuck internally reasoned, giving his gaze an excuse to flit from the oven to their front door in the living room, the corner of which could just be seen from his place at the kitchen table. There was no knocking or the familiar rustling of wind chimes that indicated a guest had arrived.

Except for Taeil, all of the inhabitants of 300 Fox Way were present for the reading. Taeil preferred to stay out of the household’s psychic business, a preference that Donghyuck usually shared. Not tonight, though.

Everyone else was accounted for. Yerim was sat next to Donghyuck at the table and every time their eyes met she erupted into giggles. Joohyun was furiously scrubbing their dishes, though they hadn’t eaten dinner yet. The scent of sage clung to the air from Jungwoo cleansing the air in preparation for the reading and Doyoung was inspecting his tarot deck with a look of intense concentration on his face, as if looking for some sort of damage or discrepancy on the cards.

“What if they don’t come?” Donghyuck blurted out. His anxious outburst surprised nobody but himself, reddening his cheeks.

“Stop being so optimistic and have some tea,” Doyoung ordered. He refilled Donghyuck’s mug with his favorite homemade lavender blend.

Donghyuck didn’t have a lot of time to worry about whether or not the raven boys would show up, or worry about why he was so worried about whether or not they’d show up. Jungwoo’s voice floated toward them like his sage, from the other side of the house.

“My wind chimes are getting excited,” he sang. Donghyuck could picture the good natured smile he must’ve worn. He was right- the charmed wind chimes he’d been given by a magician had picked up speed. Someone was coming.

The party migrated into the living room, Doyoung marching straight up to the door and pulling it open with an air of drama.

Donghyuck couldn’t help but peer over his father’s shoulder. A boy was at their door, his hand raised in a fist like he was about to knock, eyes wide and mouth in a small O-shape.

Mark Lee.

Donghyuck swallowed and retreated to the bottom step of their staircase near the back of the living room, next to Yerim. This way he was covered by shadows and furniture, free to observe from a slight distance.

“Is that him?” she whispered, clutching his arm.

Donghyuck nodded, feeling like if he spoke, his voice would only crack. His skin prickled with sparks of electricity.

He thought he knew what to expect tonight, but seeing Mark Lee in the flesh, alive and in full color, taught him that he knew nothing.

Mark Lee was not a flickering spirit, vague and otherworldly. He was a living boy, Donghyuck’s apparent true love, _who was currently inside his house._

Donghyuck didn’t know how he was supposed to cope. What was he supposed to do with a true love who represented everything he hated, didn’t know he existed and was definitely going to die sometime within the next twelve months? He caught himself wishing he’d listened to Doyoung and made himself scarce, barely resisted the temptation to run up the stairs and climb into his attic.

“Are you Kim Doyoung? I believe we spoke on the phone,” Mark was saying, a charming smile on his face that made Donghyuck wrinkle his nose in distaste. He wished he could rub that false smile off with an eraser, leave behind only the pencil smudges that lay underneath. This wasn’t the Mark Lee he’d met in the cemetery, all gentle eyes and kind smile. This boy looked like an entirely different species.

_A raven boy._

Doyoung didn’t respond, just moved away to allow Mark to cross the threshold. He did, without hesitation or disarmament at Doyoung’s cold treatment toward him, eyeing the interior of their living room with open but casual fascination. His interest reminded Donghyuck of the way raven boys looked at him during his shifts at Nino’s. They looked at him and his eccentric clothing like he was a curiosity, a delightful local attraction to charm and then make into a joke later on, in private. Their funny little colorful Southern waiter, who wouldn’t stop scowling. As if they thought Donghyuck wasn’t smart enough to realize he was being laughed at.

Mark was flanked by two friends, both in Aglionby uniforms like him, but in varying conditions. His own uniform was perfectly fitted to his figure and in much better shape than the one his spirit wore, but rumpled like it had been stuffed into a suitcase for several hours before he put it on in the morning. His sleeves were shoved up to his elbows, as if they would be in his way otherwise. A yellowish stain marred the front of his otherwise crisp, white button-down shirt.

The boy on his right was classically handsome, more so than Mark was. His features were prominent and seemed chiseled out of marble, his dark hair neatly cut and splayed above his brow bone just so. Donghyuck was reminded of the Classical Greek statues he’d seen pictures of in his textbooks, marble impressions of gods and heroes. His uniform was fitted just as well as Mark’s was, but was neat and freshly ironed, as if Joohyun herself had attacked it. The polished effect was somewhat ruined by the thick, brown band gripping his wrist, markings that Donghyuck couldn’t quite make out etched onto the leather surface. It looked like it would’ve been more at home at a flea market than in a raven boy’s possession.

The final boy, so much more diminutive in stature than his friends were, was also the most intriguing in his placelessness. His companions were unmistakably raven, walking into the room like they would never think to question whether or not they belonged. Though this boy made for a convincing mimic, confidently standing with his slight shoulders back and head held high, something inherent to all the raven boys Donghyuck had seen was missing. His eyes were sharper and more blatantly observant, darting around the room like he was committing every detail to memory, as if he couldn’t afford to do anything else. He hid it well, and if Donghyuck hadn’t been paying such close attention he might not have noticed, but the boy had a hungry, defensive look about him, like he thought everything good in his life was seconds from being ripped away from him, but he would fight tooth and nail before he let it happen. The fierce aura he emanated was a distinct contrast from his delicate, elfin features. Coupled with his baggy, worn-out uniform, Donghyuck would guess that this was a scholarship kid. He didn’t even know Aglionby had scholarship kids.

According to Mark’s introductions, the scholarship kid was Huang Renjun and the Greek God was Park Jeno. The three of them crowded into the living room, overflowing the space with their conspicuous presence. It was obvious that Mark and Jeno had never learned to contain themselves, that they never had to linger in the background to make the people around them more comfortable and Renjun was clearly trying very hard not to do just that. The effect was that Donghyuck’s living room felt half its actual size, more claustrophobic than usual. Donghyuck was self-conscious and resentful in equal measure.

“Should we take a seat, or…” this was Jeno speaking, polite but cold. He had the air of someone who was being held against his will and wanted you to know it, without him having to say so and be accused of being impolite.

“Do what you want,” Doyoung said at the same time that Joohyun scoffed and Jungwoo gestured for them to take a seat at their sofa.

Jeno sat down gingerly, like he was afraid he might catch something from the ancient piece of furniture. Renjun tried to copy him, but he looked too natural in such dingy surroundings. Mark didn’t even hesitate, dropping to a hard seat without another thought.

The three adult psychics considered their patrons for a moment. That moment was long enough for Mark to begin to fidget, politician’s smile faltering. Donghyuck leaned forward in interest.

“I thought we could do a standard psychic counseling session if you’re open to the idea-”

“The most we’re prepared to do is a one-off reading,” Doyoung insisted, almost gleeful in his refusal. “The energy in this room… it’s too much.”

Donghyuck would’ve thought Doyoung was just saying that to be difficult or to get the boys to leave more quickly, but even Yerim was stiff next to him, her usually bright, perceptive eyes a little hazy. Though Donghyuck couldn’t feel it, he knew the signs well enough. There was some seriously intense psychic energy bouncing off the walls, making his family tense and fogging their minds. His father once explained it to him by comparing it to a traffic jam at a four-way stop, multiple roads present but no way forward. Joohyun added that while you were stuck in your car, everyone around you was angrily shouting different suggestions to improve the situation, their voices mingling together until they reached the point of unintelligibility.

Mark’s genteel facade crumbled for all of a second at Doyoung’s words, a slight pout marring the surface of his smooth features.

“What’s a one-off reading?” Renjun asked.

The question was directed toward Donghyuck’s parents, but Mark was the one who answered.

“A one-off is when you draw just one card from a tarot deck and the psychic will make an interpretation based off of that.” The barest hint of resigned disappointment filtered through his controlled tone. “Am I right?”

“That’s right,” Doyoung allowed.

“Take it or leave it,” Joohyun added.

“Well,” Mark’s charming smile was back in full force. “We’ll take it, of course.”

Donghyuck blinked away any surprise he might’ve felt at Mark’s knowledge of the supernatural. Demons also knew a lot about the supernatural. That didn’t make them endearing, so neither was Mark Lee.

“Yerim,” Joohyun called to her daughter. “The stones.”

Yerim seemed to glow as she rose to her feet in one graceful motion, prompting the three boys to look toward the staircase for the first time that evening. Their eyes skimmed Donghyuck, no one lingering except for the small, observant boy called Renjun. Donghyuck told himself he wasn’t bothered that Mark Lee directed his charming grin toward Yerim and not him.

“I think I may have seen you drive by me the other day,” he said, tilting his head to the side to accompany his genial smile. “I was stuck off Cherry Street, by the forest?”

Yerim shrugged with a sly tilt to her lips. “Must have been someone else,” she trilled, making Donghyuck sure that she really had seen Mark Lee on the side of the road. Joohyun was hiding a smirk of her own behind a slender hand.

Mark let it go easily, though Yerim hadn’t exactly been convincing.

“Yerim is my daughter,” Joohyun told the three boys, looking reluctant to part with any sort of personal information. “She’s still learning, so she’ll be taking your elements.”

“Our elements?” Jeno asked. He looked suspicious and Donghyuck couldn’t blame him. His family was behaving oddly tonight, even by their rather steep standards, with such thinly veiled hostility and discomfort.

It was Mark Lee’s own fault for being Donghyuck’s soulmate and/or murder victim.

“Your reading will be more accurate if we know which element your energy corresponds to,” Yerim explained. She shook a deep purple, velvet drawstring pouch in their direction, which Donghyuck knew contained small stones she’d taken from the four corners of Doyoung’s elemental garden earlier that morning. “So pick a stone and let me read you.”

Yerim went to Jeno first. His fingers slipped into the pouch with a delicacy Donghyuck didn’t expect from him, plucking out a misshapen brown rock between his thumb and forefinger.

“Earth,” Yerim sighed, disappointed. “ _Bo_ -ring.”

She looked over her shoulder at the parents to make sure she was doing everything right and once she’d gotten their nods of approval, she skipped over Mark and went to Renjun. He rummaged around for a while before picking a small black shard, with jagged edges.

Yerim’s eyes gleamed. “Oh, I like you,” she told him, approvingly. She winked. “You’re fire. Clearly the superior element.”

Renjun’s cheeks flushed a dainty floral pink that didn’t suit Donghyuck’s perception of fire elementals, but he looked pleased.

Next, Yerim almost slunk toward Mark, eyeing him like a lion would a gazelle. “Your turn, Mr. Lee,” she drawled, dangling the pouch toward him invitingly.

Mark obliged, shoving his hand into the bag and taking out the first stone he came into contact with. It was perfectly smooth and round, slate gray in color. Donghyuck’s stomach clenched.

“Aww,” Yerim cooed, eyes glittering dangerously. “Air. Just like our Hyuckie.”

Donghyuck flinched, willing the shadows to cover him, but it was too late. Mark Lee’s eyes were following where Yerim gestured, to where Donghyuck was seated on the staircase.

“Speaking of Hyuckie,” Jungwoo spoke up for the first time since the raven boys arrived, “why don’t we have him shuffle the cards tonight?”

Doyoung tensed, glowering in Jungwoo’s direction, though the animosity didn’t faze the other man. Asking someone else to shuffle your tarot deck was not a typical request. Donghyuck had vague memories of being asked to do it a few times when he was younger, but it made just as little sense to him then as it did now. He assumed that it had something to with soulmate stuff this time around and reluctantly got up to join the rest of his family.

“Is he learning too?” Jeno asked. Though his tone was carefully polite, there was a steady bite layered beneath it, just on the edge of mocking.

“We’re all always learning,” Jungwoo answered, dreamily, not giving away that he caught Jeno’s hidden bite, though Donghyuck was sure that he had. “But to answer what your question attempted to ask, no. Hyuck was not given the gift of Sight. The goddess has other plans for him.”

“So why is he…” Jeno began, abruptly stopping when Mark elbowed him in the ribs.

“I know you,” Renjun blurted out, eyes on Donghyuck. “I’ve seen you at Nino’s.”

Donghyuck took the tarot deck Jungwoo offered him, nodding as he began to shuffle the cards. He made a show of it, more so than he usually would, riffling and rotating the cards, the type of simple tricks that never failed to impress the type of people who went to see psychics. His heart pounded, aware that Mark Lee’s gaze was trained on him. “Congratulations. I wait tables there on the weekends.”

“Oh,” Renjun answered. “Cool. Very cool.”

Donghyuck snorted and handed the shuffled deck back to Jungwoo. “Not really.”

“Right,” Renjun agreed. “Not cool. Very not cool.”

Jungwoo interrupted them by waving the splayed cards in Renjun’s face. “Would you like to pick one now?”

Renjun agreed, pulling a card from the array.

Jungwoo plucked it from his hand before he could say anything about it.

“The Magician!” Jungwoo exclaimed. “Are you a magician by any chance?”

“Um,” Renjun stuttered, as Jeno barely stifled a laugh. “No?”

“Too bad,” Jungwoo hummed, shaking his head. He always had an affinity for magicians. He looked at the card, then back at Renjun. “There’s a chance you could become one in the future, you know, if you’re prepared to be awfully brave. I can’t tell if you are prepared for that though. I know you don’t feel very brave right now. You hate having to live in the shadows like you do, yearning for the day you can live to your full potential without having to constantly look over your shoulder. You’ll hate to hear me say that you’ve had the power to do that for a long time now because you’ve spent your entire life thinking it was impossible, or at least impossible until you reach a certain goal. Here’s the core of my reading: until you learn to accept help from others, you’ll never get where you want to go. There will always be another obstacle to overcome and it will always be of your own invention.”

Donghyuck’s eyes were wide. He’d never seen a reading that direct and sure of itself, much less one from Jungwoo. Jungwoo did tend to be the most insightful of his parents, the most in tuned with the choices people will have to make, but this was a flood of information. The style he delivered it in was more like how Joohyun would deliver a reading, sharp and not open for interpretation.

Renjun seemed taken aback, but it was Jeno who spoke up.

“That was a bit much, wasn’t it?”

Jungwoo blinked until his earlier focus was gone, replaced by his typical otherworldliness. “It was very much,” he agreed. “Your friend exudes much more energy than the average person. I just did my best to interpret it.”

Jeno looked like he wanted to roll his eyes, but instead he just gave Jungwoo a tight smile. He didn’t seem the type to argue.

“A skeptic, are you?” Joohyun asked, in a deceptively neutral tone. Joohyun usually respected skeptics more than people who believed she was actually psychic, but she’d been on edge all day. Questioning Jungwoo, openly dismissing him, seemed to nudge her toward a breaking point.

Jeno gave Mark a look, admonishing him with his eyes. “You’re not wrong. I’m more here for my friends than myself.”

Without warning, Joohyun grabbed his hand and clutched it in between her own. Her eyes flashed with reflected light, the way they always did when she utilized her psychometry, symptoms of the psychic energy she was expelling from her aura. Even Donghyuck felt slightly fatigued from it.

“Somebody killed your father,” Joohyun told Jeno. “And you know why.”

For the length of a deep breath, Jeno was still. Then, he yanked his hand out of Joohyun’s heavy grip and stalked away, exiting the house with a slam of the door.

Renjun and Mark both blanched, staring at the closed door, horror and concern mingling in their respective demeanors.

“I should go check on him…” Renjun trailed off, once it became clear that no one was going to say anything. He followed Jeno out the house and though he didn’t slam the door, he didn’t carefully shut it either. It closed with a resounding thump.

“The broken boy didn’t stay for his tarot reading,” Jungwoo sighed, disappointed. “I think Joohyun made him angry.”

“I liked him,” Doyoung decided. “His aura was very soothing.”

“No it wasn’t. You only liked him because he was almost as anxious as you,” Joohyun accused.

Mark tore his gaze away from the door. For the first time that night, he seemed unsure of himself.

“That wasn’t very kind,” he murmured. “Jeno’s still struggling.”

Joohyun shrugged. “I just said what I felt. It was the only way to make him believe, anyway.”

“Mom’s the only one of us who can perform psychometry,” Yerim bragged, as if it were her own accomplishment.

“Instant knowledge through touch,” Mark said, nodding, prompting Donghyuck to wonder if he was engaging in some showing off of his own. “Did you really get all that from just touching him? About Jeno’s dad, I mean. You didn’t hear it on the news or see it in a paper or anything?”

Joohyun grimaced. “What sort of charlatan would admit to lying just because you asked nicely if she was? No. I didn’t see it on the news or read it in a paper. Make of that what you will.”

“We don’t have a TV and the only periodical we subscribe to is _Mystic Monthly,”_ Jungwoo added, helpfully. “They don’t really cover murders very often. Unless they’re, you know. Mystic.”

“Right,” Mark accepted. He hesitated, glancing back at the door where his friends has exited not even a minute before. “I should probably go after them…”

“That would make you a good friend,” Doyoung agreed. “But there’s something more important to you than that, isn’t there?”

Mark was pulling his lip with his teeth. “It isn’t that it’s more important to me,” he insisted. “Just more pressing.”

Donghyuck wondered which Mark would think was more pressing if he knew that he had less than a year to live.

Wordlessly, Doyoung handed his tarot deck to Donghyuck. The same thought probably crossed his mind as well.

Donghyuck didn’t bother with any lavish card tricks this time around. Just a straightforward shuffle and a determination not to overthink the steady burn of Mark Lee’s gaze. He handed the cards back to Doyoung, who laid them out for Mark’s selection.

Mark’s hand hovered briefly over one card before he selected the one next to it. Doyoung took it from him and stiffened when he saw which card it was.

The Knight of Wands.

Yerim released a single cackle that cut through the air like a whip. A hot red flush rushed the length of Donghyuck’s entire body. Doyoung scowled and handed the deck back to Donghyuck.

“Shuffle them again,” he ordered, which Donghyuck hastily obeyed.

Mark seemed perturbed. “Wait, I thought you could only do a one-off reading. Why-”

“That wasn’t your card,” Doyoung insisted, cutting him off before he could finish his question.

Mark met Doyoung’s eyes calmly, without flinching. “That was the card I drew.”

“The Knight of Wands is my card,” Donghyuck blurted out. “Um… it could be yours too, I guess, but my dad probably thinks I left some residual energy on it or something…”

Mark’s gaze shifted curiously to Donghyuck and he straightened his shoulders in response, meeting Mark eye to eye. He’d spent most of the night cowering in the shadows, overwhelmed by a _stupid boy,_ but no longer. He was Kim Donghyuck, heir to psychics. Not some wilting wallflower.

“I’ll draw again then,” Mark said, reaching for the array Doyoung offered him. He pulled a card and flipped it over, before Doyoung could grab it from him.

Once more, the Knight of Wands.

“Again,” Doyoung seethed, grabbing the card from Mark’s hand and passing the deck to Donghyuck.

This time, Mark didn’t protest. He just allowed them to repeat the process.

When the cards were reshuffled and were presented to Mark, the occupants of 300 Fox Way watched with bated breath as he selected a third card.

“King of Cups,” Doyoung read aloud, allowing his shoulders to relax. “Thank God.”

Mark leant forward. His dark, riveted eyes burned away any remaining false, raven charm from his demeanor until all that was left was a boy whose only concern was a question he needed answered. He was guileless, artlessly eager, young and old at the same time. Raw. Donghyuck liked him so much better like this, could feel something inside his chest twist that had never stirred before.

“Will I ever find what I’m looking for?” he asked, all reverent, hushed tones.

Doyoung observed the boy in front of him, who was either his son’s one true love or his murder victim. Most likely, he was both. No matter which, he was destined to break Donghyuck’s heart.

“I’m psychic, not a Magic 8 ball.” It was moments like these that made it obvious where Donghyuck inherited his petty, petulant streak from. Doyoung heaved a great sigh and Donghyuck could tell that he was beginning to feel overwhelmed. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow and a slight tremor in his stance.

“You, Mark Lee, are living a life of open doors. The world could be at your fingertips, if that was all you wanted, but you don’t. You want so much more than that, something no one else has ever deserved. There isn’t much you wouldn’t do to achieve your desired end along the way, but there will come a time where you’re met with a price that you refuse to pay. You’d rather pay a higher price instead, and you will, sacrificing the greatest gift you’ve ever been given. If your gift is accepted, you’ll never know if all the doors you slammed shut along the way were worth it.”

With Doyoung’s final utterance, he let his body collapse into an armchair, drained. Donghyuck felt his limbs grow heavy as well; the only person who didn’t seem like their energy had been sapped from their body was Mark.

Despite the darker nature of his prediction, his eyes were bright, focused. “When you were talking about the price I would have to pay in order to get what I want, you said, ‘and I will,’” he began. “Doesn’t that mean that I’ll definitely find him?”

Doyoung frowned. He wasn’t looking at Mark; he was looking at Donghyuck. “It isn’t an exact science,” he cautioned. “Or any science at all, really. You’re better off not analyzing my every word. In fact, I really think people would be better off not going to psychics at all-”

“Uncle Doyoung! He’s a _customer_ ,” Yerim hissed. She turned to Mark. “Psychics are great! Many people find knowledge of their own impending doom helpful rather than incredibly traumatizing. Please give us money.”

“Who are you looking for?” Jungwoo asked, ignoring his honorary niece’s display of her self-declared incredible business acumen.

The question yanked everyone away from whichever trail their thoughts had been taking them down previously. They never probed their clients on why they came to 300 Fox Way. Ever.

Except, apparently, for Kim Jungwoo.

Mark squinted, considering the question. Donghyuck thought he looked like he was deciding which lie they would find easiest to swallow. A twinge of curiosity prickled his mind, but he pushed it back just as quick as it came. Mark Lee’s secrets were none of his business.

“I’m looking for an old friend,” he eventually decided. Mark smiled and it was a wild, merry thing. Donghyuck could almost taste freedom on his tongue, the wet earth and sharp pine that he associated with Raven’s Wood, the forest that Henrietta was built around. He found himself smiling back, almost without noticing.

Doyoung noticed.

“One more thing before you go,” he told Mark. “Be careful in matters of the heart. If you start to experience feelings for someone, I foresee that it will be in your best interest to avoid them at all costs.”

Except for Mark, everyone’s eyes flitted in Donghyuck’s direction. Donghyuck wanted to dig a hole and die in it.

“Doyoung,” Jungwoo sighed, gently chiding.

Mark’s blithe smile didn’t falter, either blessedly ignorant to Donghyuck’s humiliation, kind enough to ignore it or just too preoccupied to care. Donghyuck didn’t know which he’d prefer.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Mark laughed, like he thought Doyoung was being facetious. “Though I highly doubt that’ll be an issue.”

“He better hope that’s true for his sake,” Yerim whispered in Donghyuck’s ear, to which he pinched her arm in retaliation.

Mark reached into his back pocket and took out a black, leather wallet. “How much for all three of us?” he asked, not mentioning the fact that Jeno didn’t received an official reading.

“It’s $60-”

“Per person,” Yerim smoothly interjected, cutting Doyoung off. She smiled sweetly at Mark, who just nodded and pulled out a handful of twenties, not finding anything odd about a price that was three times their normal rate.

“I’m kind of in a hurry to get back to my friends, so you can just keep the change as a tip,” he intonated as he handed the money to Yerim.

On his way toward the door, he stumbled over Jungwoo’s ancient Persian area rug that covered the surface of the living room, catching himself by pressing his hands against the wall, causing a silk tapestry hung nearby to tilt off its axis.

Donghyuck grimaced, bending down to straighten out the rug. At this point it was more of a safety hazard than a piece of eccentric decor, but apparently it was handwoven with a thousand and one blessings by some famous magician out of Marrakech, so Jungwoo forbade them from removing it.

“Sorry about that, dude,” Donghyuck sighed, once the rug had been sorted out. “This rug is an evil unto itself.”

“Its fine, don’t worry about-” Mark trailed off.

Donghyuck looked up, to find Mark looking down at him, mouth parted like a fish. His eyes were searching Donghyuck, glittering strangely with some revelatory thought that Donghyuck was not privy to. Slowly, Mark’s calculated, blandly charming smile made a return to his features, this time directed at Donghyuck. Donghyuck recoiled from it, repulsed.

“What did you say your name was, again?” Mark asked.

Donghyuck stood, adopting the defiant stance he wore at school and in town, his armor against those who would try to make him feel less than, the armor that had been so weakened by recent developments. “I didn’t.”

Mark blinked, heavy. “Your family called you Hyuckie, didn’t they?”

“Its Donghyuck,” Donghyuck rushed to clarify, defiance crumbling as he focused all his energy on maintaining his body temperature so that a rush of blood to his cheeks wouldn’t expose his embarrassment. He wasn’t sure if he succeeded or not.

“Nice,” Mark grinned. “And you said that you work at Nino’s on the weekends?”

He ran a hand through his soft black hair. The movement was too precise to be a reflex- he must have known how attractive it was. Mark Lee was the approachable kind of good looking that pulled shy preteen girls out of their shells, had an open demeanor that made anyone he was speaking to feel valued.

Donghyuck hated that sort of thing. In his mind, if you were going to make someone feel important, it should be because they were important to you. Not because you needed them to like you.

If Mark Lee was really his true love like all the signs pointed to, Donghyuck was beginning to question destiny’s judgement.

Donghyuck just nodded to Mark’s question about working at Nino’s, willing the raven boy to hasten his supposedly urgent exit from his home.

“Maybe I’ll see you around some time, then,” Mark offered, not showing any sign that he noticed Donghyuck’s recalcitrance. Though his eyes were trained on Donghyuck, there was a distance reflected in his gaze that made Donghyuck feel he was being looked through rather than looked at. “We go to Nino’s all the time.”

Donghyuck couldn’t remember ever seeing Mark Lee and his merry gang of misfits at Nino’s, but until St. Mark’s Eve, all raven boys looked the same to Donghyuck, so it was possible that they’d been overlooked.

“Good for you,” Donghyuck deadpanned.

He needed Mark to leave so he could return to his life free of potential soulmates and murder. Now that he’d met the boy he was destined to a.) love, b.) kill or c.) all of the above, he was ready to move on. He hadn’t found Mark Lee intriguing at all. There was absolutely nothing compelling about him. Once he left, Mark would become nothing but a slight curiosity in his mind, something so small and insignificant that it would take next to no effort on Donghyuck’s part to ignore him. Screw destiny, screw the universe. Mark Lee would never mean anything to Donghyuck.

Really.

Mark Lee finally seemed to take the hint and left, tossing a genial ‘See you around!’ over his shoulder. There was no doubt in Donghyuck’s mind that it was intended for him, and not Yerim or any of the other psychics at 300 Fox Way.

“What. A. Dick,” Doyoung muttered once the door had slammed shut.

“A dick who tipped us _$40_ ,” Yerim exhaled, staring rapturously at the stack of crisp bills clutched in her hand. She turned to Joohyun. “Mama, when I grow up, I’m gonna marry a rich man.”

Joohyun snorted, but the tender way she her fingers carded through Yerim’s hair revealed her true affectionate amusement. “Fine. Just don’t expect me to come to the wedding.”

The pair left the living room, Jungwoo trailing after them. Donghyuck’s brain was still buzzing with all that had transpired, from the unusual reading, to the way Mark had suddenly shifted his attention toward Donghyuck in the end, to meeting Mark Lee himself, in all his overly polished glory. Still, there was enough brainpower left for him to feel grateful toward his family, for recognizing how overwhelmed he felt and giving him the space to process. He began to head back toward the staircase, into the sanctuary of his attic.  
As his foot touched the first step, he heard Doyoung’s voice call after him.

“Hyuck,” his father asked, in a frazzled tone that Donghyuck was all too familiar with. “How attached are you to working at Nino’s?”

Donghyuck sighed. “Very attached, Dad. I’m saving up for South America after graduation, remember?”

“Right,” Doyoung agreed, shaking his head. “Right, yeah, of course. Of course you should stay at Nino’s. Just be careful, okay?”

Donghyuck couldn’t suppress the twinge of annoyance he felt at his father’s hovering. “I know, Dad. If Mark Lee ever even looks at me again, I’ll immediately run in the other direction. Okay?”

Doyoung opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, his face twisted in a way that made Donghyuck positive his clairvoyant abilities had made something unpleasant clear to him. Once his features had smoothed, he was looking at Donghyuck with petulant betrayal in his eyes.

 _“Liar.”_

~~~

There was a lightness to Mark’s gait as he skipped the last two steps leading down from the porch at 300 Fox Way to their sandy, gravel driveway.

Renjun and Jeno were leaning against Jane, murmuring to each other in low tones. Though Renjun was significantly smaller than Jeno, the way that Jeno curled into himself gave the impression that it was the other way around. Mark felt a pang of affection mixed with guilt at the sight. Jeno used to do that all the time, mold his body around whoever he was standing next to, usually resulting in giving him a smaller stature. Since his father’s murder, Mark had rarely seen him stand any way other than rod straight, as if he could no longer afford comfort. It was lovely to see again, but reminded Mark that Jeno needed him, and Mark had made him wait.

When they heard the crunch of Mark’s footsteps approaching, both boys looked up, their conversation reaching an abrupt halt.

“What took you so long?” Renjun asked. He looked composed, but the way he shifted to the side of his feet exposed his anxiety. “If I’m not back in like twenty minutes my dad will kill me.”

The reminder of Renjun’s father spurred Mark into action, unlocking the car doors and pushing the driver’s seat down so that Jeno could crawl into the back. He didn’t answer Renjun’s question, mind stuck in an elevated, pleasant, fuzzy place. It wasn’t until he’d turned the key into his ignition and Jane rumbled to life that a wide smile overtook his face, laughter bubbling up from his chest.

Renjun looked at him in alarm. “Um. You good, bro?”

“Never better,” Mark answered, cheerily. He paused, looking between his two friends. Renjun’s expression was a cross between concern and judgement, while Jeno’s was a single raised brow. Mark pulled the clutch into reverse and backed Jane out of the driveway.

“I know who the voice on the recording is.”

~~~

The trees seemed to shudder as the Gray Man trudged through the forest, despite the fact that no one in Henrietta had felt a breeze since early February. The ravens screeched at him from their perches in the branches, angry, nightmarish cries that raised his hackles, made it impossible for him to think.

He needed to think.

“Shut _up!”_ he thundered in the general direction of the treetops, rubbing his temples when his anger only served to rile the cursed birds even more. Even the half-moon above his head looked more yellowish than usual, as if it were flashing a warning sign at him. “Fucking drama queens.”

The Gray Man closed his eyes, took several long, deep breaths, just like his therapist had taught him to do whenever rage threatened to overwhelm his judgement. When that didn’t work, he kicked a tree trunk and ripped a handful of leaves from it’s branch. Something heavy whacked into his back, forcing him to tumble forward into the dirt on his hands and knees, ruining his slacks. He was sure that one of the tree’s other branches was the culprit, but when he turned to look, nothing was out of order, the tree behaving just as trees were supposed to, still as a dead body.

“I hate this fucking forest,” he muttered, pulling himself up to his feet, brushing the dirt off his pants. He shined his flashlight down and grimaced at the brown markings on his knees. Fucking fantastic. This was the most vicious he’d seen Raven’s Wood since he was a teenager.

The thought sparked an idea in his mind, one that made him forget about his filthy slacks, mouth spreading into a predatory smirk.

“You’re angrier than usual, darling,” he called, allowing his voice to carry, booming throughout the forest. “That means I’m close, isn’t it? Closer than I’ve been since I came back to this godforsaken town?”

There was a suspicious tickling along his left calf, like there was a large spider crawling up his pants leg, but he just crushed it against his skin with his right foot. That was as good as a confirmation, but he wasn’t a child anymore, vulnerable to foolish fears. He’d trained it out of him, all in preparation for this moment.

Tonight was the night.

Sure enough, not ten minutes after his outburst, he came upon a clearing. He’d come upon many different clearings since coming back to Henrietta, all of them looking near identical, but as soon as he arrived at this particular one, he knew he’d found what he was looking for.

The ever-shifting heart of the forest. This one’s name was Cabeswater.

“Found you,” The Gray Man sang. The screeching from the raven’s was now near-deafening. He barely noticed.

He made his way to the center of the clearing, where four large stones were grouped in a circle, illuminated directly by the moon, covered by large fronds. When he touched them, the fronds were as sharp and heavy as a sword, but he lifted them anyway, ignoring the way they slashed into his palms, cutting open his skin in two neat lines, blood flowing from the wound with a volume that should not have been possible for cuts of that size. The Gray Man paid it no mind, eyes and mind on what the removal of the fronds revealed.

A boy lying in the center of the circle, no older than sixteen, eyes closed, arms straight at his side, palms up. The moonlight made him glow, allowing his eyelashes to cast delicate shadows on his cheeks. He looked peaceful. If the Gray Man didn’t know any better, he’d assume he was sleeping.

He knew better. The boy was dead. He had been for almost fourteen years now.

The Gray Man knelt down, cupping the corpse’s cheek with his bloody palm.

“Hello, old friend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DUN DUN DUNNN (both about my ending and the general state of ncity rn) 
> 
> a fun idea for a kingdom come drinking game would be to take a shot every time the author used the word 'energy' to describe a vague concept she doesn't understand and doesn't ever plan to!! my thinly veiled excuse is that magic is so ancient the characters don't even really know what the fuck they're talking about. i hope you all get the general ~vibe though
> 
> thank you so, so much for all the support on the last chapter. it really kept me going- i hit a rut with this chapter that I couldn't think of how to get out of, so I just stopped writing altogether for a week, but the memory of your lovely comments and kudos' kept me going<3 i have really mixed feelings about this chapter, but i hope you guys like it!!! 
> 
> we're meeting the rest of the dreamies next chapter and the plot should start picking up right after that. i've finally mapped out how i want this story to go (though i still have to work through an outline fasjkhgl) and i'm excited to get to my major divergences from the og story. it's probably gonna be longer than 10 chapters :o and i have very little willpower so that fucking sucks but i'll try and power through!!!! 
> 
> please don't hesitate to leave a comment or drop a kudos. even if its just a single exclamation point or question mark, it still makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and i will accept your punctuation with open arms<333 also, feel free to follow me on twitter or ask me a question via curious cat!! i seriously really would love to interact with all of you and answer any questions you might have about kingdom come or just talk about theories with you<3
> 
> [ twt](https://twitter.com/feministkrystal)  
> [ cc](https://curiouscat.me/feministkrystal)
> 
> p.s did you notice the minor change i made to the title? i added the 'our' originally bc i wanted to make it less biblical but w/e. it was clunky and now it's a red velvet reference too!! win-win. (oof that one hurted)
> 
> p.p.s WHY ARE MY AUTHORS NOTES ALWAYS SO LONG WHY CAN'T I JUST EMBRACE ~BREVITY LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING AND NOT OVER EXPLAIN MY EVERY THOUGHT


	4. chapter three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi there<3 sorry for the wait- here's a long boy to make up for it!! i posted a twt poll asking whether you all wanted this long chapter or for it to be split into two and everyone voted for the long boy so i hope that's okay with you all!!!
> 
>  **possible cw: there is a v brief, vague mention of a past serious illness in this chapter. if you have any concerns about this theme going forward, please contact me so i can let you know what to expect. it will never be a huge part of the plot or described in detail and i will always post a cw like this whenever relevant. ty!!!**
> 
> i should also say that in a past chapter i referred to the raven boys taking latin- thats been changed to japanese for reasons that will become clear this chapter:) this will def be proof-read later but for now enjoy it in all its wild glory.

If Renjun had to make a list of all the places where he most wanted to spend a Saturday, Nino’s Pizzeria would be toward the very bottom, only marginally above a high-security prison or his parents’ home.

Growing up in Henrietta, he was aware of Nino’s on Main Street the same way a dog was aware of its muzzle. The crumbling hole in the wall joint dated back to the early 1950s, when Henrietta was still a bustling mining town. Precariously squeezed between the only Starbucks in Henrietta and the second best but most expensive hardware store in town, since its earliest days the pizza parlor had been a buzzing locus for Henrietta’s most sinister parasite, the raven boy.

Renjun’s family hardly ever went downtown, preferring the strip mall with cheaper discount stores off 13th and Concord, but whenever they did, Renjun was always rushed by Nino’s with a firm grip to the back of his neck, eyes down, lips sneered. He was supposed to hate raven boys, and he did, but he was also drawn to them at the same time, from his very earliest memories. Who were these sleek, well-fed boys who seemed to live life with arms outstretched? Without fear or caginess, giving no consideration or care to how hated they were by everyone Renjun knew. They flocked to Nino’s in droves, boisterous and smiling, their every movement a performance, though they never let on that they knew they were being watched. Renjun did watch them though, almost obsessively, and eventually he began to notice how their eyes scanned the room before they entered, taking stock of who was in their audience tonight. All that wealth and freedom meant nothing if there was no one around to dangle it in front of.

The raven boys were kings, untouchable in their castle on the hill, fortified by steel and gold. Renjun didn’t want to live out the rest of his life as a peasant, barely clinging on to the underbelly of society. He may have hated the raven boys, but he wanted to be one even more.

So he suffered through the beginning of his third hour at the cursed pizza parlor, almost four years and tens of thousands of dollars worth of education affording him a minor position in this cold, raven court. He would be patient and not complain, proving himself to be worthy of an even higher honor.

“How do you even know he’s working today?”

Park Jeno did not need to prove himself to anybody. As a baby, he was fed the honors Renjun lusted after with a silver spoon. Renjun shouldn’t have begrudged him that, not after everything he’d been through.

‘Shouldn’t’ and ‘didn’t’ were two very different words.

Mark looked up from the sticky Formica table that a pimply, disgruntled local teen had guided them to when Nino’s opened earlier that afternoon. He had been scrubbing at a suspicious stain with a napkin he’d dipped into his murky water glass, but when he met Jeno’s eyes, he looked anything but bored.

“He said he worked here on weekends and it’s Saturday. I’m sure he’ll turn up eventually.”

_He _was Donghyuck , the mysterious boy they met the night of their strange, ill-fated psychic readings, the surly psychic’s son. Renjun remembered him lurking in the back that night, bronzed skin illuminated by the pale glow of the burning candles, heart-shaped mouth parted as he examined Renjun and his friend’s like they were a new strain of disease under a microscope, fascinating but with the potential to kill.__

Renjun was no stranger to navigating hostility in an enclosed space, but the energy he felt at 300 Fox Way the night before was something else entirely. Part hostility, part curiosity, part fear. In his early days at Aglionby Academy, he was often the only person in the room who didn't understand what was being discussed, the knowledge of which always required a type of cultural capital only possessed by the upper echelon. He hated the feeling so he did what he did best to remedy the situation.

He observed.

He studied his new classmates in their natural habitat, copied their every sweeping gesture, every sly lilt of the brow, and practiced them in the bathroom mirror until the movements were coded into his hardwire. It wasn't enough just to master the rigorous Aglionby curriculum, so he made a mental note of every unfamiliar name, book or film his peers referenced and researched them at the public library, during the hour between school letting out and his job at the garage starting, his only bit of freetime. Enough time had passed to where he could slip into the necessary conversations with relative ease, though he knew that to his fellow raven boys' trained eyes, the stain of poverty still announced itself on his person like a neon sign.

So, Renjun knew and hated what it felt like to be kept in the dark. Perhaps Mark and Jeno didn't notice, never having been in a disadvantaged position before, but Renjun noticed everything.

The residents of 300 Fox Way knew something Renjun and his friends didn't, something that directly involved or affected them. Whatever it was that they knew, however they knew it, Renjun wanted to find out.

Donghyuck was their best chance.

Almost immediately after crossing the threshold into the sweet, heady atmosphere that was 300 Fox Way, Renjun noticed that Donghyuck was behaving differently from his clairvoyant family. While they were all tense muscles and smoldering stares, Donghyuck was wide eyes and a nibbled lip, knees curled into his chest. On top of looking at them like they were an infectious disease, he looked at Renjun and his friends like they were both a question and an answer, a problem and a solution.

One of the few things that was clear to Renjun that night was that for as much as he wanted to know the secrets of 300 Fox Way, Donghyuck wanted to tell them.

Jeno was frowning as Renjun considered this, fiddling with some stuffing that was poking through a hole in the vinyl booth they shared. His dissatisfaction was a reminder that not everyone in their trio had walked away from 300 Fox Way with a yearning for more.

After witnessing the psychic reading Jeno received that evening, Renjun had been itching to ask Jeno why he reacted the way he did. If the psychic's crass words had been complete hogwash, cruelty spun from the loom of the many local news articles on the murder of Virginian-based businessman Park Junghwan, surely Jeno wouldn't have left the house in such a huff, wouldn't have been caught blinking back tears by Renjun when he followed to check on him, wouldn't have protested so strongly against Mark's insistence that Donghyuck was the voice on the EVP recording, so clearly yearning to wash his hands of 300 Fox Way and never dirty them again.

Whatever it was, Renjun knew Jeno would never tell him. He might’ve told Mark, if the boy in question hadn’t been so preoccupied as of late, but the first real lead Mark had ever gotten on the Sleeping King’s whereabouts made him distant, unreachable.

Jeno looked like he was on the verge of saying something, when his petulant expression shifted to be carefully neutral. He leant forward and wrapped his lips around his straw, sucking up the melted ice at the bottom of his soda glass, eyes downcast.

It didn't take long for Renjun to be aware of the reason for Jeno 's change in demeanor.

Na Jaemin was looming over their table, his signature bright smile and glittering dark eyes on full display. Renjun's heart sank to his stomach, but he didn't allow his disappointment to show on his face. Instead, he adopted his imitation grin, the one he wore at Aglionby, the one that made him look pleasant, affable, with an undercurrent of smug. The same grin that would get him slapped and even further ostracized than he already was if anyone who knew him growing up saw it.

If Mark and Jeno were outliers amongst the rest of their classmates, with their penchants for hunting down ancient mythical kings in their spare time, Na Jaemin was the illustration you'd find under 'raven boy' in the dictionary. He was boyishly handsome, yet distinguished, in a way that was only ever born from the collision of an old money business tycoon and his second wife, nee mistress. His mischievous smirk helped him charm his way out of trouble more often than it got him into it, and there was no shortage of things Na Jaemin did that would've gotten another student expelled.

Jaemin nodded at Mark and Renjun, greeting them both with a hearty exuberance, but when he turned to Jeno , his gaze turned hooded, eyes lingering and dragging over Jeno's features like wading your way through honey. Sticky.

Filthy. Renjun felt like he was intruding on a private moment, which he knew was Jaemin's intention by coming over to their table. He wanted to peacock whatever was going on between him and Jeno in front of Jeno's friends, for the sole reason that Jeno wanted it kept secret. Renjun wondered if he should tell Jeno that he'd known about their dalliances for months now, probably since it first began, if Jaemin's sudden lack of subtlety in January indicated anything.

He knew that Mark was still clueless, bless his heart. When Mark wanted to be, he was observant in a way Renjun had never seen from anyone else before. He wasn't like Renjun, who needed observations to satiate a clawing hunger within him, to gather and store as much information as he could, so he would always have a weapon on hand to combat the advantages he was born without. Renjun saw every shift of expression, every untoward glance, every ugly bit of soul someone might want to hide from the world.

Mark saw _potential_.

With his background and charm, Mark could’ve befriended anyone at Aglionby. Of his endless options, he chose Jeno, the shy boy wilting in the back of the classroom, and Renjun, the scrappy, hungry looking boy who reeked of _caring_ , the worst sin a boarding school boy could be guilty of. He hadn’t even hesitated, just plucked Jeno and Renjun out of the crowd and named them his lieutenants.

To this day, Renjun didn’t know why Mark had chosen them of all people, but he did know that it was a debt he would never have the means to repay.

"Jeno," Jaemin acknowledged. "Haven't seen you around the track in a while."

Jeno hummed non-committedly, not looking up from his glass, though the way he fisted the hem of his white t-shirt exposed his true anxiety. Renjun raised his eyebrows and saw Mark doing the same. They knew what the 'track' Jaemin spoke of was; what they didn't know was what Jeno would be doing at said track.

Jaemin seemed to take Jeno's non-response as an invitation to continue.

"Jisung's been stopping by recently," Jaemin offered with a false casualty, as if the thought had just occurred to him. "He's almost as good as me."

Jeno looked up with a flash and Jaemin smirked, feral. He knew that he'd said the one thing that could still draw blood from the bloodless Park Jeno.

"Jisung?" Jeno asked. "Jisung's been going to the track?"

"Yep," Jaemin confirmed, popping the 'p'. "We've been hanging out a lot lately. He's actually waiting in the car for me to pick up our food now."

Jeno didn't ask any more questions. He climbed over Renjun to scrape his way out of the booth, striding toward the exit like a shot. Mark hid his head in his hands and sighed, bordering on a groan.

For his part, Jaemin looked sheepish.

"I probably shouldn't have told him that Jisung was here."

Mark separated his hands from his face and looked up at Jaemin, smile bright like it had never left. Renjun wondered if he was the only one who could see the strain and worry behind Mark's twinkling eyes. "Don't worry about it. They'll be fine."

Despite his assurances, he followed Jeno out the door. Renjun allowed himself to relax. Mark would take care of things before they got out of hand. He always found a way.

"I really didn't mean for that to happen," Jaemin said. He slid into the booth across from Renjun, into Mark's former seat and picked a sad chunk of sausage off their now cold, barely touched second pizza. "I didn't think Jeno was so far gone that he'd make a scene in public. That isn't like him."

Renjun stifled a feeling of indignation toward Na Jaemin. He'd been Jeno's dirty little secret for barely four months now and he was already telling Renjun what was and wasn't like Jeno? Everything anyone knew about Park Jeno had to be thrown out a window after his father's murder. Besides, when it came to Jisung, Jeno had always behaved differently. Unpredictably, even. The two brothers had existed across a fractured divide for as long as Renjun had known them and the fracture had only deepened in the year since their father's death, strengthened by their vastly different methods of processing their grief.

"Is Jisung really going to the track?" Renjun asked mildly, in lieu of explaining all that to Jaemin.

Jaemin's lips quirked into a fleeting but genuine smile. He looked almost proud. "He's a natural. Wasn't lying when I said he was almost as good as me."

Renjun frowned. The last thing that the Parks needed was their youngest son getting kicked out of Aglionby. The last thing _Jeno_ needed was his little brother getting kicked out of Aglionby.

“Do you want my advice?” Renjun asked the other boy.

Jaemin raised his eyebrows. “Not particularly.”

Renjun continued on, undeterred.

“Stop letting Jisung hang out with you. Jeno won’t think you indulging him is cute or funny.”

Jaemin’s brows raised even further up his forehead, as if he couldn’t believe Renjun’s audacity. He regarded the boy in front of him like he was seeing him for the first time and deciding that he wasn’t going to be impressed by him. His lips plumped out into a petulant pout and he batted his long lashes at Renjun. Renjun grimaced at the display of cuteness.

“But I _like_ Jisung,” Jaemin whined. Beneath his cloying tone, there was an unmistakable edge, a warning not to press any further. “I don’t want to stop hanging out with him.”

Renjun shrugged. “Fine. It's your choice. I was just warning you that Jeno wouldn’t like it is all.”

“Jeno and I like each other,” Jaemin declared, almost triumphantly, like he knew the words were sharp enough to scar. His condescending smirk returned, goading Renjun. “But you already knew that, didn’t you? You’re a perceptive one, Huang Renjun. So am I. I see you.”

Something ugly and savage twisted in Renjun’s gut. He wanted to grab Na Jaemin by his unbuttoned collar and thrash him into the floor, ripping the condescending smirk off of his face with his bare hands if he had to.

 _Stop_ , a voice emanated from his mind, a voice that sounded an awful lot like Mark Lee. _You’re better than that. You’re better than_ him.

Renjun closed his eyes and thought of Harvard, its ivy covered walls and hallowed halls. He thought of having a job he would get to wear a suit at, and how his suit would be bought new, in exactly his size, from some fancy department store. He thought of the _money_ he would have, enough of it to buy a nice apartment in a big city and eat out at restaurants with his friends. He thought of how Aglionby was his only chance of ever stepping foot on that campus or getting that nameless job and how Aglionby would revoke his scholarship faster than a march hare if the administration ever got wind that he’d put his hands on Na Jaemin, no matter how many times Na Jaemin himself had been caught with a bloody mouth and an even bloodier fist.

The administration couldn’t fault him for making an innocent observation, though.

“You’re right. I am observant. Its true that _you_ like Jeno.”

It wasn’t ripped off with Renjun’s hands, but the condescending smirk disappeared all the same. Less satisfying, but at least it alleviated the awful burning in his gut.

Renjun stood before Jaemin could prolong the conversation, not trusting himself to rein in his better instincts for any longer.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Renjun drawled, grandly, in his best raven boy impression. “I should probably go make sure you haven’t instigated a fratricide.” 

~~~~

The first thing Mark saw in the parking lot was Jisung’s fist connecting with Jeno’s jaw.

The blow wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, thanks to Jeno’s quick intervention in the form of gripping his brother’s wrist before his full force could be executed, but Mark still winced.

“Are you insane?” Jeno spat, once Jisung’s fists had stopped wandering from his sides. “What, you hang out with Na Jaemin for like two seconds and suddenly it’s on sight?”

Jisung scoffed, turning his back to Jeno. It was then that Mark noticed he was with Zhong Chenle, Jisung’s roommate. Mark couldn’t remember ever seeing Chenle around before Jisung moved into the dorms, but once the two started hanging out together, Mark was suddenly aware of all the rumors that followed him around like flies to rotting fruit. The school whispered that Zhong Chenle was the wealthiest student to ever attend Aglionby Academy, that he was a piano prodigy as a child and performed around the world, from Shanghai to Mexico City. Others claimed he was a popstar back in China and was only at Aglionby to weather out some scandal before going back to recapture the charts.

The only thing Mark knew for sure was that Zhong Chenle was currently infatuated by Park Jisung. He was watching the boy with worried eyes, glancing every now and then at Jeno with unwarranted wariness.

In the year following Park Junghwan’s mysterious murder, his sons had both undergone tremendous transformations, leading them in opposing directions.

Despite his natural, slight frame, Jeno had always been fit, but it wasn’t until after his father’s death that he stopped shrinking himself and hiding his body with soft, oversized sweaters and started standing at full height, shoulders back. Rare and far between became the brilliant and warm smiles Mark had first noticed about him, what everyone first noticed about him. Jeno used to be quiet and gentle, a pleasant but easily overlooked presence chewing on his pens in the back of the class. Now it was like Jeno felt like he had to sharpen his soft edges, fulfill the image of dutiful first son, become the gatekeeper for every secret his father left behind, the one who enforced his rules, no matter how little sense they made.

Jisung pushed back on that conclusion. He'd always been closer to Junghwan, as well as the one to find him sprawled on the floor of the Park family barn just outside of Henrietta city limits, with a bullet wound through his head so clean Jisung didn't notice it until the paramedics told him it was there.

While Jeno became more polished and focused, Jisung veered toward the opposite direction. He didn't understand why their father had left Jeno with so many instructions, why those instructions involved never stepping foot in their family home or seeing their mother ever again. He especially didn't understand why Jeno listened to them and resented him for it.

As Jisung's anger grew, so did his physical form. In the year since Junghwan's death, his voice had sunk to a deep baritone, he’d shaved his head, grown five inches and he showed no sign of stopping any time soon. Mark struggled to reconcile this version of Jisung with the one he'd met as a freshman at Aglionby, who liked his dance class and manga and followed Mark around like a lost puppy. Now, apparently, he was racing cars with the likes of Na Jaemin, getting involved with who knows what other illegal extracurriculars went on at that track.

So, apparently, was Jeno.

A frown bit into Mark’s cheeks, without his permission. He knew that Jeno was grieving, that it had changed a lot about him, but he hadn't thought that he would have to worry about him, not in that way. For how differently the Park brothers seemed to be handling their newfound situation, more and more Mark was beginning to suspect that there were more similarities in their approaches than differences.

He had to be better about noticing things like that sooner. Jeno needed him.

Renjun and Jaemin walked out of Nino's then, but Mark motioned for them not to get too close. The sight of Jaemin would only antagonize them all further.

"You don't get to tell me who I can and can't hang out with," Jisung was saying. "Especially not when I _know_ that you're doing the same."

"It's different," Jeno choked out, through gritted teeth.

"Why?" Jisung demanded. "Because you're a whole year older? Which is why you also get to be in charge of our finances and tell me where I can and can't live and forbid me from seeing our own mother, God even knows where she is. Do _you_ even know where she is? Do you even care? It was bullshit when the lawyers told us and it's bullshit now."

Jisung was starting to resemble a thunderstorm, the kind that decimated trees and made it unsafe to drive. Mark thought it was time he stepped in, before anyone got shocked.

"Okay, okay, why don't we all just calm down?" Mark suggested, walking forward so that he was in between the two brothers.

The response was immediate, both brothers taking a step back, though without taking their bitter eyes off of each other.

"Stay out of this, Mark," Jisung growled.

Something ached in Mark’s chest. Jisung was taller than him now, looked tougher and meaner most of the time, but in that moment, glaring at his brother in a pizzeria parking lot, trembling fists clenched at his sides, slight quiver noticeable to his lower lip, Mark could see the shadow of the little boy he once knew. The little boy who demanded to play video games with them, afraid of his older brother’s wrath but the confidence of his mother’s support preventing him from shaking too violently.

Jisung didn’t have his mother to protect him anymore, but by the looks of it, he’d developed other forms of armor.

Chenle reached out then, and gripped Jisung's forearm with his pale hand.

"He's right, Jisung," he murmured, in what was a low tone for Chenle and a normal tone for anybody else. "Now isn't the time or place."

Jisung started to make a biting retort, but before any sense of it could be made, they were interrupted.

"Um. Are you guys in a fight or something? Not that I care or anything, but I would really appreciate it if you waited until my shift was over before mauling each other to death. Less clean-up that way."

A sparkling warmth bubbled in Mark's chest at the sound of the familiar voice. He turned around and sure enough, there he was. Donghyuck, the cute boy from the psychic house, the one with the silken voice Mark had captured on his EVP recording, the boy who potentially held the answers to every question that had ever mattered to Mark. The boy he'd been waiting for.

The boy who scrunched up his button nose in disgust as soon as he recognized Mark and his friends.

"Donghyuck, hi," Mark greeted. He ruffled his hair, hoping it made him seem casual and not like he'd been staking out a low quality pizza joint for the past four hours, just for the chance to ask Donghyuck a few questions. The urge to bounce eagerly on the balls of his feet was strong, but he suppressed it in his effort to appear calm, trustworthy and mature to Donghyuck. He offered the other boy an easy, loose grin. "You don't have to worry about any annoying clean-up. I'm sure it looks a lot worse than it is."

Jisung and Jeno both scoffed, which Mark ignored, but Donghyuck seemed to catch. He rolled his eyes in Mark's direction, though their gazes didn’t meet, Donghyuck’s eyes sliding over Mark’s like they were too slippery to catch.

Mark had never seen Donghyuck in the light of day before. At 300 Fox Way he'd been either hidden by shadows or illuminated only by candlelight, so he'd caught just a vague impression of the boy. Outside, with the sun shining down on him, he looked glorious in gold and bronze, all precious metal. Almost otherworldly, like an angel or fairy. Mark thought his unusual appearance was satisfyingly fitting, considering the central role he would hopefully play in Mark’s ambition. It would’ve been somewhat disappointing, if Donghyuck were ordinary.

Donghyuck was wearing a striped t-shirt in bright washes of lemon and lime, paired with denim shorts and fluorescent yellow flip-flops- the cheap foam kind you could get at Walmart for less than a dollar. His nails were fire-engine red, but chipped, like he only cared about the color and not how they actually looked. He’d tied a scarlet ribbon around his neck as a sort of make-shift choker; from a distance, Mark could imagine that it might look alarmingly like a bloody slit against his smooth skin. There was a light dusting of gold glitter along his cheekbones and eyelids, his pouty lips stained red, like he’d just eaten a bowl of cherries. A reusable grocery bag in dyed green canvas was slung carelessly over his shoulders.

Mark’s mother was a progressive Democratic senator who had been bringing Mark and his older brother on the campaign trail with her since they were children. The point being, Mark had met people from all walks of life, all with different styles of expressing themselves. Seeing a boy wearing makeup was not so unusual for him as it must’ve been for the average Henriettan. He could even appreciate it, be a little in awe at Donghyuck for having the guts to do something like that in a depressed town that was so set in its ways, so quick to judge and feel fury. So broken.

“Well,” Donghyuck drawled. “Either way, you’re taking up space in the parking lot. So, either you go inside or you leave. Or stay, I guess. As long as you’re quiet I suppose I actually don’t care much about what you do.”

Jaemin cautiously approached Jisung with their pizza boxes in hand, giving a shrewd side-eye to a seething Jeno. There was something going on there, but there wasn’t space in Mark’s mind to process it, so focused he was on Donghyuck’s retreating form.

“Wait!” Mark called, grabbing Donghyuck’s thin wrist to drag him to a halt.

The muscles in Donghyuck’s back tensed and it was a moment before he turned around. Everything about the arch of his brows and the tightness of his lips read that he was unimpressed, but there was a rosiness beneath the molten gold of his cheeks that Mark didn’t think was artificial.

“Yes?” Donghyuck asked. He sounded bored and a little impatient, but he was staring at Mark’s pale hand wrapped tightly around his wrist like it was a slumbering wild animal, harmless only for the moment.

Mark let go, bringing his hand back down to his side, flexing his digits to alleviate the prickling sensation that had started to blossom beneath the skin of his hand.

_Fair Taeyong, Lord of the Wild, Guardian of the Damned, King of the Western Woods has decided that you will live though you should not, because someone has died on the ley line, when they should not. Be grateful for his gift._

Mark suppressed a chill at the sudden recollection of words that have long been scarred into the back of his mind, the memory of which was always accompanied by the phantom sensation of starched sheets beneath him, choked by an invasive tube, steady beeping ringing in his ears, the way his eyelids fluttered shut to blackness only to be washed over by the white light of a hospital room, bracketed on both sides by his parents clutching his hands.

His mother’s tears on his cheeks.

He shook the memory away as quickly as it had come to him.

“There are some things I wanted to talk to you about,” he told Donghyuck. The prickling had started to diminish.

A brief flash of alarm crossed Donghyuck’s features, before he schooled them into something sharper, an expression guarded and heavily armed.

“About what?”

“My reading last night,” Mark explained. It was only half a lie. Something told him not to tell Donghyuck about hearing the two of them having a conversation on St. Mark’s Eve, that the other boy wouldn’t like it. They could work up to that, once Donghyuck agreed to help them. “I have a lot of questions.”

Donghyuck’s face relaxed, but only by a fraction. He adjusted the tote bag on his arm. “You should call my family and make another appointment then,” he told Mark, flatly. “I’m not psychic. Now if you’ll excuse me, I really need to get to work.”

He looked and sounded done with the conversation, but Mark couldn’t let that be true. He reached out to grab Donghyuck by the wrist again, but this time Donghyuck was ready for him, jerking back his hand before Mark could even graze the skin.

“I’m sorry,” Mark apologized, before Donghyuck could snap at him. He wasn’t frantic, but he was about as close as he ever got. “I don’t mean to be so coarse. It’s just that I think I need your help.”

Donghyuck hesitated. “You need _my_ help?”

Mark felt himself relax, all semblance of agitation thawing off his shoulders. At last, he had gotten a read on the inscrutable Donghyuck. He knew what to say to get his help.

“Yes,” Mark agreed, making his voice go breathy, earnest. “You’re the _only_ one in your family who can help.”

It was so easy, when what they wanted to hear wasn’t even a lie. Mark thought it made so much sense that this was how to get through to Donghyuck- the only normal one in a family of talented psychics, of course he would want to hear that he possessed something they didn’t.

If Donghyuck only knew how valuable he really was.

“Fine,” Donghyuck sighed, sucking his lower lip into his mouth. Mark could almost sing in triumph. “I’ll _listen_ to what you have to say, but I’m not promising anything. My shift ends at 11. If you’re not here when I leave the restaurant, then I’m not waiting.”

“Of course,” Mark agreed, readily. It would be difficult for Renjun to slip away from his father, but they would figure something out. He couldn’t keep a grin from eating the rest of his face, bright and genuine. “We’ll see you at 11.”

Donghyuck blinked and shook his head, looking down, away from Mark. “See you then,” he agreed, dryly, maybe even a little shyly.

He went inside, and Mark turned back to his friends, ready to bask in his glory. Except Jeno and Renjun weren’t beaming the same way he was. They were still tense, Jeno panting heavily as if he’d actually been in a fight, rather than just a parking lot stand off with his little brother. Jisung, Jaemin and Chenle had already departed. Mark softened and he reached out to wrap an arm around Jeno’s stiff shoulders.

“Wanna go home and play video games?” he asked, guiding Jeno toward Jane. He motioned for Renjun to follow them, the boy in question watching Mark with a slight knowing smile. “We have a lot of time to kill until 11.”

Jeno sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. “Yeah. That actually sounds really nice right now.”

~~~

The raven boy trio returned to Nino’s at 10:45 on the dot.

Donghyuck huffed in annoyance at their early appearance. He had been half-hoping they would be late and then Donghyuck would have an excuse not to listen to whatever weak question Mark Lee had to ask. The other, more traitorous part of Donghyuck, located somewhere in his chest, squeezed in eager anticipation at the sight of Mark’s beaming grin.

Donghyuck could feel it in the air. Something was about to _happen._

There was still another rowdy table of raven boys lingering over pizza crusts and off-color political satire Donghyuck had to tend to. He appreciated the extra few moments it gave him to collect himself before making his way over to where Mark Lee and his friends were seated.

“Can I get you anything?” Donghyuck asked, polite but flat, adopting his waiter persona as a method for disguising the way his pulse fluttered against his wrist.

“We’ve already had two whole pizzas,” Renjun answered, wrinkling his nose. “While we were waiting, earlier.”

Donghyuck blinked, struggling to keep any emotion from making itself known on his face. He’d figured that Mark had tracked him down on purpose, but to think of them waiting that long, _for him_...

He couldn’t deny that he was flattered, intrigued. He was weak for attention, always had been, used to follow Doyoung and the rest of his family around the house on their heels, gripping the hems of their shirts so as not to become separated, pestering them with more questions than he expected answers to, just to make sure a second didn’t go by where he wasn’t noticed. Yerim would hide from him sometimes, so annoyed by the way he clung, and Donghyuck would cry every time, a desperation for closeness clawing straight to his heart.

No raven boy had to know that though. Donghyuck kept his features impassive.

“Maybe just a round of Cokes?” Mark suggested, smiling, shameless. “Something easy since I know you’re closing soon.”

There was something in the eager way he suggested the Cokes, how he made sure Donghyuck knew he was ordering them to make his life easier, as if Donghyuck were supposed to be _grateful_ toward him, impressed by his consideration that set his teeth on edge.

“Is that what everyone wants?” Donghyuck asked Jeno and Renjun, ignoring Mark.

“Coke is fine,” Jeno acquiesced, with a slight incline of his noble head.

He was much calmer than he was when Donghyuck saw him last, in the parking lot. At that time he had been heaving with bitter, desperate emotion, completely transformed by it, so different from the presidential aura he clung to the first time Donghyuck had seen him. Now, he even smiled a little at Donghyuck, not genuinely, but just enough to make him seem pleasant, easy to swallow.

Donghyuck wasn’t such a fool that he hadn’t gathered by now that Jeno’s calm demeanor was only an outer layer covering more turbulent depths. From what he’d seen so far, Donghyuck guessed that it wasn’t very difficult to peel the paper-thin layer back and expose whatever lay beneath, like a fresh sunburn. All it seemed to take was a little tugging before the threads that held Jeno together began to unravel.

He wouldn’t lie to himself; the thought made him see Jeno in a kinder light.

“Actually, I think I’ll have a Sprite,” Renjun said. He was leant back in the booth, drumming his fingers against the table Donghyuck never cleaned as well as he was supposed to, impish grin taking over his face like he knew exactly what Donghyuck was doing and he liked it.

Donghyuck hid a grin of his own behind a hand. “Two Cokes and a Sprite, coming right up.”  
When Donghyuck returned with their drinks, a couple of beats longer than was strictly necessary, the boys were joined by the form of a man lingering by their booth. The boys all had smiles frozen on their faces while they talked to the man, but their shoulders were tense and Donghyuck thought he could sense a little strain around their eyes.

Though he could only see the back of the man, Donghyuck could tell he was older than they were, probably around his father’s age, a man fully grown. This alone made him stand out at Nino’s, where the only patrons were boarding school boys and the occasional traveller, unfamiliar with the family owned diner one block over with the all you can eat salad buffet. The boys’ apparent familiarity ruled out the latter option, but the man’s pressed slacks and silken silvery shirt canceled any possibility of his being a local Henriettan, as did the flaming vermillion hair he had tied up in a stubby ponytail.

Donghyuck waited at the edge of the kitchen, peeking out at the boys, no other responsibility now that the other remaining raven boys had vacated. His manager never stayed later than 9, trusting Donghyuck enough not to burn the place down in his two hour long absence, but not much more than that.

When Donghyuck got too impatient to wait any longer, he walked toward the table, hoping the appearance of a waiter would jostle the man into leaving. His approach seemed to be welcome, if the way Mark perked up and relaxed was any indication.

“Your drinks,” Donghyuck offered, placing them on the center of the table rather than in front of the individual. He addressed the older man with a smile so simpering, it bordered on a sneer. “Can I help you? We’re just about to close.”

The man turned to look at Donghyuck, who was caught off-guard at the sheer white light brilliance of the man’s smile. The smile was wide and gummy, the kind that could soften the prickliest of hearts, but more than that, it was _wild_. Donghyuck didn’t know another word for it. The upward curve of his lips was an alluring Bacchanalia, mischievous and inhibitionless. It was raw feeling, burning rage and burning love, frightening and resplendent.

At least, it was for one enticing moment.

Upon making eye contact with Donghyuck, the unbridled grin grew a bridle. Physically, it looked the same, broad and dazzling, but the tone was markedly different. Less _wild_ and more curious. Like he’d come across the first unexpected thing in years.

Donghyuck took a step back.

The man checked his watch, which looked oddly dated, just a small silver face on a thin, worn, black leather band. He grimaced good naturedly at the time. “It _is_ quite late,” he sighed, shaking his head. He had a slight accent that Donghyuck couldn’t place, one that gently caressed every word he spoke. Was it from somewhere in Europe? Asia? Latin America? All seemed equally plausible. “Terribly sorry about that. I’m dreadful with time.”

“This is Professor Nakamoto, our Japanese teacher,” Mark explained. “It’s his first year at Aglionby. Professor Nakamoto, this is… our friend, Donghyuck. He lives here, in town.”

Donghyuck barely resisted a snort at Mark’s use of the term ‘friend.’

_An Aglionby teacher. _That explained it.__

Aglionby teachers were a strange breed, one that Henrietta didn’t quite know what to do with. They weren’t wealthy like the raven boys, which was a point in their favor, but they were educated, and visibly annoyed at their placement in an all-boys boarding school located in the middle of nowhere. Most of them lived out of town, commuting up to several hours each day just to avoid living in Henrietta.

Apparently, real estate options were limited lately, if the presence of a professor at Nino’s just before midnight was anything to go off of.

The professor, Nakamoto, was still looking at him like an archer to a deer. “It’s lovely to meet you, Donghyuck.”

Donghyuck shivered.

“Likewise. There’s a Domino’s like ten minutes from here, if you’re in the mood for pizza,” Donghyuck suggested, naming the filthy chain all the locals ordered their pizza from. He was eager for the strange man to leave and take his unsettling smiles with him.

Nakamoto clapped his hands together and cackled, a high, reedy sound. Donghyuck got the sense that the man was seriously unhinged.

“What an excellent idea, Donghyuck! Chez Domino’s it is.”

He left Nino’s in a flourish, without saying goodbye to his students.

When the door was shut and there was a decent amount of distance between them, Donghyuck crossed his arms.

“So, your Japanese professor is definitely on some sort of stimulant, and I highly doubt its Adderall. Either that, or he’s having a breakdown.”

Renjun furrowed his brow in mock confusion. “You think he’s on Vyvanse?”

A laugh scratched it’s way up Donghyuck’s throat and he quickly turned to walk over to the door and flip the ‘open’ sign to ‘closed’. As an excuse to prolong the moments before he was forced to listen to Mark Lee’s bullshit, he went over to the old-fashioned juke box by the counter.

“Any requests?” he called.

The juke box had about forty songs on it, none of which had been updated since the restaurant first opened and all of which Donghyuck had heard multiple times in his ten months at Nino’s. Still, it was better than allowing the raven boys to be his only company, them and his vicious thoughts, which wouldn’t stop centering around Mark Lee.

When the only suggestions he heard were 90’s gangster rap from Mark and Disney songs from Renjun, he put on a random Elvis tune, something from one of his Hawaiian films, and called it a day.

The soft crooning and mournful, twanging guitar filled the restaurant at a low volume, making Donghyuck feel less alone, less on edge. He made his way back to the booth that the raven boys had claimed.

“So. What questions did you have about the reading?”

Mark gestured for him to sit. He occupied one side of the booth, while Jeno and Renjun the other. Donghyuck took the seat beside Renjun, pushing the two of them inward, causing a disgruntled Jeno to be shoved against the wall.

Mark’s placid expression faltered, like an 8-bit glitch. Donghyuck felt a thrill tickle it’s way down his spine at the sight. He took one of the Cokes he’d brought the boys for himself. Mark’s frown deepened. Donghyuck rattled the ice as he sucked the syrupy liquid up a plastic straw, through his smile.

Mark cleared his throat, shaking his expression back into something pleased and genial. He leant forward so that his chest was pressing against the edge of the table, which made Donghyuck lean back, so that his back was pressing against the vinyl covering.

“Have you ever heard of Taeyong?” Mark asked. His eyes seemed to burn at the utterance of the name, an enthusiastic impatience simmering underneath, like it was knowledge he lived to share, like everything else he’d ever done meant nothing.

Donghyuck slurped more of the Coke, loudly smacking his lips together when he was done. The slightest hint of disgust was visible on Mark’s face, so Donghyuck took an even longer draw from the beverage, till it was down to the dredges, the wet sucking noise reverberating through the room.

When he finally answered, he considered his words carefully, designed them to make the sharpest cut.

“You mean the ancient Korean king? From the fairytales?”

Mark twitched, the final remnants of his genial facade falling from his face, and Donghyuck grinned, pleased to have made a dent in Mark’s polished exterior.

“You’ve heard of him?” he asked, resigned.

“I know a lot of fairytales,” Donghyuck teased. “My family’s psychic. I was raised on stories of witches and goblins and ghouls. Creatures of the night. Some of them are even our friends.”

Donghyuck meant to sound dark and foreboding in an attempt to frighten or alarm the raven boys, and he did feel Renjun shiver next to him, but Mark seemed to light up at the information, delighted rather than deterred. Whether his delight was based in anticipation, relief, or something deeper, something more personal that Donghyuck would never know was unclear.

“So they’re real? All those creatures you mentioned? Magic is real?”

Donghyuck blinked. “Well… yes. Although, you shouldn’t call them creatures. Its rude. I know I just did it, but it was only for dramatic effect.”

Mark exhaled, his broad, straight shoulders slackening, as if now that he knew for certain what he’d always suspected, he could loosen the bonds holding him upright. “And you know all about it,” he murmured, gazing across the table at Donghyuck. The weight of his stare was heavy and two-fold. Under it, Donghyuck felt more precious than he’d ever been made to feel by anyone other than his family. At the same time there was a part of him that couldn’t help but feel appraised, like he was being seen as an object. Just a useful tool for Mark Lee to utilize in whatever way suited him best.

Donghyuck would never admit it, but he liked feeling precious enough to ignore the latter emotion.

Mark smiled in that disarming way of his, somehow completely open while revealing nothing. “It’s an interesting story, from what I’ve read,” he mused. Donghyuck gritted his teeth at the deflection. “Then again, that isn’t much. He’s awfully hard to find any material on.”

Donghyuck thought of the stacks upon stacks of dusty books his family kept strewn haphazardly throughout 300 Fox Way, full of spells and lore. He was certain there were at least a handful of texts that mentioned Taeyong, but there was no way he was telling the raven boys that.

Really.

“You mentioned needing my help,” Donghyuck said, mustering up as much coldness as he could. “But if the only reason you convinced me to stay at work past my set hours was to talk about fairytales, I’ll just go. Not all of us have the luxury of free time, I have to work again tomorrow and it’s already past midnight-”

“I’m sorry,” Mark interrupted, quickly. He’d held out a hand as if to grip Donghyuck’s retreating form, but Donghyuck hadn’t actually made any move to leave. Mark grinned as he withdrew his hand, obviously pleased, while Donghyuck scowled. “I’ll tell you why I want your help.”

“Mark...” Jeno warned, voice trailing off. Donghyuck was surprised to find that he sounded vaguely embarrassed. Mark waved off his concern with a hand, never taking his eyes off Donghyuck.

“Have you ever heard of ley lines, Donghyuck?” Mark asked.

Donghyuck nodded, waving an impatient hand. “Yeah, yeah. Lines of spiritual energy across the world that connect places of magical importance. Judging by the obscene human to ghost ratio, Henrietta’s probably on a couple. What about them?”

Mark’s eyes gleamed. “Well,” he began, his voice carefully measured. “I study them. I have for a while, actually.”

“You _study_ them?” Donghyuck wrinkled his nose and scoffed. “Aren’t you like seventeen? The only thing you probably study is Latin or Ancient Greek or something equally pointless…”

“You _just_ met my Japanese teacher,” Mark defended himself. “You know I don’t take Latin. Also, I’m eighteen.”

He sounded almost offended, almost _annoyed_ and Donghyuck hummed, pleased when he realized he’d managed to push the polished raven boy to the edge of dishevelment, to the edge of retaliation. There was something sickly satisfying about watching the halo of carefully cultivated calm that always surrounded Mark Lee be disturbed, in watching him feel discomfited, taken aback. Donghyuck felt a burning urge to poke and prod, to know the heat of Mark Lee’s anger, to see him floundering out of his depth.

“And how exactly have you studied ley lines?” Donghyuck deadpanned. “Wikipedia doesn’t count.”

Mark’s back hit the booth behind him with a thud. His eyes went toward the direction of Renjun and Jeno, silently asking them to commiserate with him, but Donghyuck didn’t look to see how they responded.

“I’ve spent every summer looking for them since I was thirteen,” Mark said. He sounded almost petulant, Donghyuck realized with a shiver of excitement. “I started at Stonehenge, but I’ve been everywhere since then. I wanted to drop out and look for them full time when I turned sixteen, but my parents had other ideas. It was lucky that I stumbled across an old letter at a museum in Llangefni talking about Henrietta and all the strange things that happen here. It was even luckier that there was a school here my parents would actually approve of. Really, everything just seemed to fall into place. Like magic.”

Donghyuck made a retching noise.

Mark continued, pretending not to hear. “As soon as I got here, I knew I was right to come. The energy… it’s different. Especially in Raven’s Wood. That’s where we spend most of our time, looking.”

“You’re a ley hunter,” Donghyuck concluded, doing his best to keep his voice level, free of any jealousy. “A teenage one at that. Some type of supernatural Boy Wonder.”

The more dedicated, better researched ley hunters came through Henrietta from time to time, and would inevitably always find themselves at 300 Fox Way. All supernatural trails in the town tended to lead back to Donghyuck’s family, an Ariadne’s string leading Theseus out of the labyrinth.

Jungwoo liked them best, because of course he did. Though he rarely talked about it, Donghyuck could faintly remember a time when Jungwoo wasn’t around as often as he was now, years in Donghyuck’s youth spent traveling around the globe, collecting gifts from the magicians he charmed and running from those he didn’t. If he liked them, he’d invite the ley hunters into their home, have Doyoung cook them a meal and tell them all the spots in the town where the magic seemed most concentrated, the places where even the most average human might be able to get a spell or two to work.

Donghyuck liked them too. They were usually older, mad professor types, all wild gray hair and crooked spectacles. They had _stories_ , ranging from typical travel mishaps to unfortunate run-ins with poltergeists. No matter the content, Donghyuck always listened with open ears, the stories both fulfilling and stoking a hunger for _more_ that Donghyuck couldn’t remember ever living without.

Mark Lee was not a wizened old man who lived through the acid tests. He was a boy, a privileged boy, who could do anything in the world and chose this.

“Why?” Donghyuck asked. “Why ley lines?”

Mark hummed, eyes losing their laser focus, straying around the diner like he was deep in thought. He looked like he always looked, like he thought everything in the world was fascinating and wonderful, except it was a quieter appreciation. Easier to swallow. Harder to hate.

His eyes found their way back to Donghyuck, this time accompanied by a smile. “It all goes back to Taeyong, I guess. We want to find him.”

Whatever Donghyuck was expecting, it was not that. “You…” he trailed off, mouth dry. Mark Lee had managed to do with one sentence what Donghyuck had been trying to do to the other boy all night- throw him off. “You became a ley hunter at thirteen because you want to find an ancient mythical Korean king? And… you think a small town in Virginia is the best place to do it?”

“Why do you say mythical?” Mark asked with the slightest of frowns. “If ‘witches and goblins and ghouls’ can be real, why not Taeyong?”

“For starters, _if_ he existed- and that’s a big if; a magician friend of Jungwoo’s disproved the Arthur myth years ago- then he’d be dead. Taeyong was a _person_ not a species. Plus, in all the stories I’ve read, he sacrificed himself to save his people, so he’d be dead anyway.”

Mark’s eyes lit up. He took a phone out of his pocket and began looking through it. “That’s the thing,” he murmured, while he tapped away. He quickly found what he was looking for and looked up from the screen to grin at Donghyuck. “Look at this.”

Donghyuck reached across the table to receive the phone, jerking back when his fingers brushed against Mark’s. The phone looked like a new model, but the screen was nearly shattered. Through the cracks, he could just make out a photograph of an open book, the yellowed pages filled with chunky lettering that looked like it came from an old-fashioned printing press.

A particular passage was circled in red, clearly an alteration Mark had made to the image rather than the actual book. The circled passage read:

_As King Taeyong lay dying in the arms of his most Beloved knight, the loyal Mage Seungwan the Wise called on the soul of the Spirit Road and begged that Magnificent being to spare the Fair king. In honor of his noble sacrifice, which was entirely Pure, and because the spirits will always favor Nature’s children, an enchantment was cast. As the king drew what would be his Last Breath, he instead fell into a deep Slumber. The Triumvirate agreed to hide their king’s vulnerable body somewhere deep along the Spirit Road until the one Foretold arrived to perform the ritual and Awaken him. They vowed that whomever managed to Awaken the Sleeping King would receive any gift of their choosing, no matter how fantastical, their abilities being forged so far beyond the realm of Man. Seungwan the Wise used Magick most ancient to fashion Fair Taeyong a coffin befit a King of his standing…_

The red marking hid the rest of the sentence. Donghyuck’s mind was reeling. He blinked up at Mark.

“I don’t remember any of that from my fairytale book.”

Mark seemed pleased to have finally found something that Donghyuck didn’t already know. “I found it at an occult library in Wales. Some British guy from the 1800s put it out as part of a ‘Folk Tales From Around the World’ collection. That library has one of the last copies left so I couldn’t buy it from them, or even check it out, but they let me take some photos. It’s… the only mention I’ve ever found. Of Taeyong.”

Donghyuck’s gaze turned sharp. “How did you even know to look?”

“I didn’t,” Mark replied, without hesitation. “Before I found that book, I’d never heard the name in my life.”

“And, what?” Donghyuck asked, crossing his arms. “You find one mention of him in an imperialist book of fairytales and decide to dedicate your life to… what is it you’re doing? Searching for his corpse? So that you can perform some ritual to revive him, hoping that a trio of knights- who have somehow survived these past thousand or so years- will grant you a wish? You realize that’s insane, right?”

Mark just smiled, serene. “I realize that it may come across that way to some people, yes.”

“Great,” Donghyuck muttered. He turned to face Renjun and Jeno. “And you guys… help him with this?”

Jeno fidgeted uncomfortably, ignoring the question. Renjun appeared to think it over before shrugging.

“Gives me something to do in my freetime, I guess.”

Donghyuck huffed. In his seventeen years of life, he’d known a lot of people who believed in unlikely things, who followed their hunches no matter how hare-brained they seemed to be. He lived with people like that. He’d spent so much time complaining about the spur of the moment quests his family decided to go on, whining that he wouldn’t be able to help the goblins anyway and couldn’t he just go to ceramics like a normal kid?

It figured that his soulmate would be just as crazy.

“There is a reason behind my interest,” Mark insisted, as if he could sense where Donghyuck’s mind was going. “Did you catch where the knights took Taeyong’s body? And what Seungwan summoned to save his life?”

The realization clicked into place in Donghyuck’s mind. “The Spirit Road,” he breathed. “Ley-”

“Ley lines,” Mark interrupted. He sounded calm, but the very fact that he did interrupt belied how eager he truly was. “The author is referring to ley lines.”

“Hence why you think he might be in Henrietta,” Donghyuck extrapolated. “If the knights could somehow tap into that spiritual network-”

“-then, theoretically, they could travel along the ley lines, like some kind of spiritual highway, going from one connection point to the next. Meaning they could start somewhere in Korea-”

“-and end up in Henrietta,” Donghyuck finished, breathless.

He stared at Mark, who met his gaze with gleaming eyes of his own, forearms resting on the table, leaning forward as if he could press weight into his words with the force of his body. Putting together the pieces of why Mark Lee might be interested in the legend of the Sleeping King, what all that had to do with Henrietta, was the most excitement Donghyuck had felt since his father had told him they were letting him come to the St. Mark’s Eve ritual. He’d felt almost feverish as he traded sentences with Mark Lee, forgetting in that moment that they weren’t alone, that Mark Lee was a raven boy, that he was either Donghyuck’s soulmate or someone he was destined to kill, but most probably, he was both.

All there was, was a feeling Donghyuck had never felt before, a feeling that he suddenly knew he’d been waiting all his life to feel. The feeling that he was close to something _important_ , a discovery or a moment or a realization, something that had been waiting for him just as long as he’d been waiting for it.

As the moment settled around them, that feeling within Donghyuck began to dull. He suspected it was just Mark Lee’s contagious excitement and wondered if that was how he’d roped the seemingly sensible Huang Renjun and Park Jeno into his scheme, if it was some type of superpower he could wield.

“Why me?” Donghyuck asked. It wasn’t until he vocalized the question that he realized it had been living so tightly in his chest. He swallowed. “If you really want to find him- which, by the way, I’m still not convinced is possible- my family would be so much better suited to helping you. I can’t- I can’t do any of the things they can. How could I help you?”

Mark appeared to consider the question carefully. Something inside of Donghyuck ached as he fixated on the other boy’s Adam’s apple, watching it bob as he swallowed. Mark Lee was so- he was so infuriating, with his obvious privilege and his easy smiles and his voice- his voice that was somehow silky and rough, like honey poured over sugar crystals. The way that his phone was probably more expensive than anything Donghyuck owned and obviously new, and yet was already fractured to the point where he could hardly even read what was on the screen.

Donghyuck hated it, he hated that the universe was starting to make a little more sense to him. That even though he knew Mark Lee was pandering to him in that parking lot when he insisted that Donghyuck was the only one who could help him, that clearly he had an ulterior motive, Donghyuck could _still_ see why the universe might think he and Mark Lee were a perfect fit.

That still didn’t mean Donghyuck had to submit to the idea.

“Have you ever just… had a feeling?” Mark asked. “Something entirely out of the blue, with next to no fact based reasoning behind it, yet you just know it to be true? Like… a voice in the back of your head, that guides you to where you need to be. That’s how I felt the first time you spoke to me, Donghyuck. I think that voice in my head… wanted me to find you. I just feel, perhaps inexplicably, that I need you.” He looked a little surprised and unsettled by his own words. He cleared his throat, as if willing the sentimental words to break away. “Have you ever felt that way, Donghyuck?”

Donghyuck’s throat was dry. He averted his eyes, looking down into his lap from under his lashes.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I know what you mean.”

“So… you’ll help?” Mark clarified. The gentle assuredness and quick mind that he’d always shown was replaced with an uncertainty that looked foreign on him, that the voice in the back of Donghyuck’s mind told him was genuine.

Donghyuck thought of the excitement he felt in his exchange with Mark, the yearning he’d always had for an adventure that was all his own, where he wouldn’t have to take a back seat to his family, for stimulation. He thought of having something to do after school when he wasn’t working, people to see who wouldn’t be frightened or weirded out by him. How it would feel to fall in love and never be able to kiss, lest his loved one die. He heard his father’s voice, making him promise not to go near Mark any more than he had to, trying to protect him from that very outcome. That glimpse of Mark Lee’s smile he’d once seen, and what a wild, merry thing it had been.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck answered, softly. “I’m in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... how have the last six months been??? i'm truly so sorry about the long wait. i started posting this fic during my summer break and i've reallllly never been the best at juggling multiple tasks at once, but this past semester was especially challenging. i have a lot of hope that future chapters won't take as long to update bc... yr girl... dropped out of school??? a little bit?? i'm technically still enrolled but i'm going to take at least a year off (another one...) to figure out the right path for me bc!! uni turned into a really bad situation after a while. anyway that's all to say that i'm much less 'on the verge of mental collapse' which means more writing time!! yay!! 
> 
> i also wanna apologize for all the times i posted smth on twitter like "guess who's almost done with the chapter?? should be up by tmrw!!" only to not post the chapter the next day. the only excuse i have for that is that this chapter turned into QUITE the long boy. every time i thought i was almost finished it just kept on going... as a result this is almost twice as long as the other chapters. 
> 
> though i'm hopeful i can now go on a semi-regular update schedule, the best place to find out update news is my twitter!! i post about it pretty frequently and answer any dms/ccs. 
> 
> as always, if anything is unclear PLEASE don't hesitate to let me know so i can clear it up!! there are so many plot points floating around in my head that certain things can fly under my radar. 
> 
> thank you so much for anyone who is still out there and for those who reviewed last chapter. you're all real ones. and for anyone new- welcome!! please feel free to ignore my ramblings. they happen a lot and they're rarely important- just a digital manifestation of one girl's xtreme nervous energy. 
> 
> i'll get to the reviews from last chapter some time later tonight!!
> 
> xxx
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/feministkrystal)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/feministkrystal)


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